Night wide awakings!

[Flossie's Mum]

I have had sonme amazing help so far from the naps and pu/pd boards, but thought I'd post this here as my 7mo dd's NWs are now becoming a nightmare and taking priority, although the naps aren't completely sorted yet either. Last night she woke over 20 times, and being a little OT from poor naps yesterday surely contributed but even on a good night her longest sleep stretch is one period of 3.5 - 4.5 hours from the df to somewhere between 1 and 3am.

When she wakes up, she becomes wide awake very quickly and almost never settles herself (the same is true for naps), and sometimes she starts screaming, but often she behaves as if she's not tired, playing with the bars of the cot/lovey and fighting me if I try to roll her onto her side (she always sleeps on her side). I've done some pu/pd but (although admittedly I haven't persevered for long) it didn't work at sending her back to sleep because she wasn't crying much so I wasn't really sure when to do the pu part! She only gets about 10 - 12 hours sleep every 24 hours, including naps and if I get her up when she's like this she starts to yawn, rub her eyes, etc so she is tired and needs more sleep, I just have to convince her of that!

I used to sh-pat her when she was younger but it seems to irritate her now as often as not, although it sometimes works ... but when it doesn't work, has anyone got any ideas just how to send her back off to sleep, apart from apop? She isn't teething or suffering from reflux or anything like that, she just seems to act as if she's refreshed from the little sleep she's had and wants to get up. She's never had a dummy/paci and she's breastfed and v small for her age, so I still feed her at 3.00am, which is probably what she's waking up for around that time, although she tries to doze off on the breast when she's finished feeding. After that she usually wakes up every 10 - 30 minutes until its time to get up around 6.45am.

Any suggestions gratefully received! 

Louise

[Flossie's Mum]

Hi, our routine looks like this at the mo, at least it does when if the naps are going well (1hr15m is the best I can get by a long way and she's only done 2 naps like that in one day once, usually its one bad nap and one good one). She's only been having solid food for about a month and so she still has the same number of bfs as always, although they are getting shorter as she's getting more food into her tummy

6.45am A
7.00 E (bf)
8.00 E (solids)
9.45 S
11.00 E (bf)
11.30 A
12.15 E (solids)
12.45 A
1.45/2.00 S
3.00 E (bf)
3.30 - 4.15 A
4.15 E (solids)
4.45 A
5.15 E (bf)
5.45 A (bath and bedtime wind down)
6.15 S


I've recently increased the A time to about 3 hours (she is 7 months and 1 week old) as she dropped the cn about a month ago and was ut, at least in the morning. However when her naps are bad like today, when she slept for only 35 mins each time, I offer a cn still and she takes it about 50% of the time. Today she took it at 4.15 so her A times were 3 hours, 2hrs 50m, then 2hrs and 2hrs

I've also changed her bedtime around a bit and its around 6.15 now (if there's no cn) which is to make sure her last A time isn't so long that she becomes ot. As it is, if she finishes her pm nap at 3.00 her A time is 3h15m which still seems long to me, but even earlier seems too early. As it is, she has usually woken at least twice before her 10.00 df (tried making it later and earlier and it doens't make a difference). She usually goes off to sleep easily at bedtime and after her df, but then wakes fairly regularly/predictably around 2.00am (sometimes 12.00 and 1.00am too), then at 3.00 when she's bf and after that she wakes more and more frequently until from 5.00 or 5.30 its every 10 - 20 mins until we get up at 6.45. After her 3.00 feed she can take anything up to 90 mins to settle, although in the last couple of weeks this is happening less often, so hopefully its becoming a thing of the past!

Does the nature of the A time make a difference to whether they're ot or ut at all? Sometimes its just me and her at home doing housework and playing together but sometimes we have visits to friends houses with their noisy busy children running around. I always go by her signs rather than the clock when it comes to naps but then as her bedtime varies and she sometimes has a cn, I worry that it will confuse her bodyclock. 

One last question, she's always slept on her side, from the days of sh-pat when it made that easier, and I daren't change it now in case it is too much of a change in her routine and prevents her sleeping, but it can't be too comfy laying on one side for hours, so maybe its affecting her, do you think? Or would she just roll over if it bothered her? Once or twice I've seen her asleep on her back, so she must have rolled over in her sleep, but yet when she wakes up (night or day) she is always on her back, so I wonder if rolling wakes her sometimes.

Gosh, what a long post, sorry! Thanks for your help
Louise

[Flossie's Mum]

Most naps are 35 mins, or on a good day they are 1hr 10mins (I guess 2 sleep cycles instead of one)

[Flossie's Mum]

OK, I'll try those A times tomorrow. She's goes off to sleep really well by herself (thanks to BW - she used to be breastfed for all sleeps before I discovered this!), but just can't seem to resettle herself very well and doesn't seem that happy for me to resettle her either! She's not teething, although I think she is coming down with a cold as she's been coughing today and I can feel one coming on myself, which would be her first ever illness. If she has a tickly throat, should I bend the rules and bf her in the night? Or is that a bad habit to start? She doesn't like water so far, although only tried it once (and shuddered!)

[Flossie's Mum]

Hi again,
here’s my update from today: we had 3 hrs A time as usual after getting up, followed by a 35 min nap, which I was able to extend to 1 hour with alot of intervention (although usually no amount of intervention makes any difference). After that I put her down again after 2 hours A time and exactly the same thing happened, and again I managed to extend the nap to 1 hour but couldn’t extend it any more after her second waking. So as her 2nd nap finished at 2.30 we had a catnap at 4.15 and bedtime was 7.00pm rather than 6.30. I have a bit of a dilemma with intervening when she wakes at night or during naps as I’ve learned (esp with naps) that if I don’t get to her very very quickly, she wakes up fully, becomes hysterical and is impossible to get back to sleep. But I know I need to wait and see if she settles herself whenever I hear her stirring, and should give her chance to get herself back to sleep before going in. These two approaches seem to be mutually exclusive and I’m not sure I’m doing it right – I currently wait outside the room for 20 seconds or so when I hear her making noises, and this usually means I wait too long to get her back off to sleep easily.
Anyway, last night was a bit mixed – she has a cold and I’m trying SO hard not to resort to apop, but she’s finding it hard to breathe and keeps waking up coughing too. She woke up a few times before the df then settled quite easily after it and slept for a few hours solidly (must have been the tixylix!) But she woke at 3am and barely slept for more than 20 mins at a time after that and was wide awake and very difficult to settle, taking me over an hour of intervening at one point to get 20 mins of sleep. I never made it back to bed myself after 4.00. This is quite typical and I’m very familiar with the sound of the milkman/birds/dustbin men!
Do you know any other way to get her to return to sleep when she’s tired but awake? She thinks she’s had enough sleep and lays there playing with her teddy/the cot/sucking my finger but cries if I leave. She yawns and wakes up grumpy, but doesn’t actually seem sleepy in the way she does before her naps/bedtime, when she goes quiet and still and rests her head on me or something else.
I feel like I’ve tried everything ... is it possible she’s just like this (i.e. a ‘bad sleeper’) and will never improve no matter what I do, at least not until she’s a couple of years older?
Sorry this seems to be a nap related problem too – I’ve had loads of fantastic help and support on the naps board and they must be sick of me, but do tell me if you think its more appropriate for me to move across there.
Louise

[Flossie's Mum]

Wow, I didn't know that about the naps and night time sleep and different parts of the brain - it explains such alot! I do try to 'blend' her back to sleep when she wakes during naps but at least half the time it doesn't work nowadays (sh-pat worked a treat shen she was younger) and I end up staying in there while she screams for half an hour, then give up and go downstairs. I've tried httj and w2s without success, so is there any other thing or intervention I could try, other than pu/pd? Or is that my next course of action really? If I keep on with the reduced A time when she has a short am nap, will she eventually start napping for longer without intervention? Bringing the catnaps back when she has two short naps seems like a step backwards at 7 months, but I have to give her one to stop her pm A time being 4 hours long.

Louise

PS Thanks for that advice about elevating the cot mattress, I'll try that tonight, she sounded like a 60 a day smoker all night last night, although she didn't sleep too badly in the sense that there was no more EWs after her feed at 3.00am until 6.30

[Flossie's Mum]

She seems to be over the worst of her cold now, but her naps have got worse! She did 3 hours A time this morning, then a 35 min nap that I couldn't extend, followed by 2 hours A time and a 25 min nap that I eventually extended (resorting to rocking) to 45 mins but then couldn't extend it further. Right now she's having a cn, but I had difficulty getting her down for all 3 naps, even though I usually just put her grobag on then pop her in the cot awake with no problems.

Last night she had alot of wakings too, and woke every 40 mins from 3.30 onwards until we got up. Is there anything else I can try to extend naps, or should I just persevere with this new routine with the shortened second A time before I can see any changes?

[Flossie's Mum]

Thanks for persevering with us! Last night was soooo bad - she finished her df at 10.45 then woke at 12.00 and from then on every 40ish minutes after that, so I got 1hr 15mins sleep from 10.45 - 12.00 and only managed a few dozes after that. When she wakes in the night sometimes its easy to soothe her back to sleep but sometimes she's so wide awake and grumpy, nothing will work, and this is how she wakes from naps.

Anyway, tried a shorter A time of 2h45m this morning and she woke after 35mins, wide awake, fighting me turning her over, bashing things in her cot (and me), so I took her out and rocked her - haven't done this in MONTHS since I started bw, but she went instantly to sleep on my shoulder so she must have been dead tired. She's been asleep 50 mins so far. Is the NW and short naps because she is OT from the night during the day and OT from the day during the night? Or is it habit? Am I on the wrong board really if the naps need to be sorted first?

Oh, and one more thing, for the first time ever, when she took her cn yesterday I had to wake her up after 45 mins, so bedtime ended up being moved back to 7pm. Could it be confusing her body clock to have naps and bedtimes at differing times?

[Flossie's Mum]

quick update - after the apop intervention she napped for a total of 1hr 30 mins - the longest ever since she was a newborn! Only got 40 mins pm nap though, she couldn't have been OT, so I don't undrestand why....

[Flossie's Mum]

Thanks, I'm going to try a longer A time today for her pm nap if she has a good am nap. Had a bad night again last night, though, despite getting a total of 2.5 hours naps yesterday. She woke 3 times before the df then again every hour after that pretty much on the dot. Her bedtime was 6.30 last night and there was no cn, do you think it could be confusing her body clock to have naps and bedtimes at differing times?
 

[~Sara~]

Hi Louise!  Just chiming in with some Nap POV   It sounds like you're having a rough, rough time.  *hugs* hon...let's see if our 3 heads together can figure out these naps, the NWs, or both!

It kind of sounds like she's still having problems getting through the sleep cycle transition.  This is developmental at its root, but if she wakes up and she's used to you trying to settle her back down, then it could be a prop issue, too.  Hard to tell at this point, though.  She just constantly seems to hit that 35min point and BAM! awake, regardless of A time...which is why I think it might still be the transition issue.  But I think we've got a LO in a serious OT cycle, so it's hard to tell because OT naps are generally 35 minutes long.

If you don't mind...could you refresh my memory of how long you tried w2s and httj to extend her naps?  I noticed that she took a long nap after APOP.  When dealing with an OT cycle (meaning OT continuously disrupts both day and night sleep, versus OT which is more fleeting), I do recommend APOP for a couple of days so that LO gets some good sleep in...it kind of levels the playing field and gives us a clean slate, so to speak.  I know you might be afraid to do that because you started using BW due to a feed-to-sleep association (I recommend the rocking in your situation as it seems she likes that).  But, at some point, LO just needs some sleep.  Furthermore, if it makes you feel any better, when DS has a cold (he's had 3), we've always done APOP to help him sleep better.  Then, we gradually reduce that until he's doing his independent sleeping again.  Don't feel guilty if you have to hold her elevated (or elevate her mattress, which really isn't APOP) for a night so that she can breathe and sleep...we've all done APOP at one point or another. 

Re: holding back when she wakes up...I think after some APOP, it's worth it to hold back more and more until she reaches the "I need you!!" cry.  If she short naps because she can't resettle on her own, then we can deal with that; but it's worth it, I think, to at least fully give her the chance to self-settle.

Fwiw, the NWs seem to be OT and maybe a bit of hunger driven, too, if she's not settling for longer than 40 minutes at night.  It may be that she's been up so long that she realizes that she's starting to feel a bit hungry and then can't resettle.  Have you tried just giving her a teensy bit to eat so that she feels a bit better, but not enough to throw off her appetite?  We did that the other night during DS's cold/cough.  Gave him a couple oz of water at 5 am, and he was good to go--didn't throw off his AM bottle at all (which I was totally surprised about).

Another thing running through my head--related to feeding--is I wonder if the solids are bothering her.

Lastly, I don't think you're messing with her internal clock when naps occur at different times during the day.  EASY isn't a schedule anyways, so there's supposed to be variations.  It's the overall EAS pattern that LOs thrive on...so rest assured there, hon.

Will wait to see what her day looked like for either today or yesterday; and we'll go from there *hugs*

[Flossie's Mum]

Thanks so much both of you, had a bad night again last night (3 particularly bad ones in a row, although thats when she's had a cold so probably not a coincedence) when she woke at 1.45am and just wouldn't resettle at all, even with rocking, and then, when she was still awake at 2.45, feeding (she normally has a feed around 3am). She was just wide awake, playing with my hair when I geld her, making babbling noises, looking around the room (even though its pitch black), and eventually fell asleep around 4.00 and stayed there until 5.30, then I resettled her quite easily until 6.45 when we got up.

Anyway, thanks for making me feel better about the apop, I'm terrified of her losing the independent skills we've worked so hard for her to develop, but its good to know they can easily go back to them. Yesterday's routine was like this, and as you can see, she slept for 1 hour for each nap - miles longer than her usual 35 mins, but I couldn't extend either of them

A 6.45am
E 7.00am (bf)
A 7.30
E 8.00 (solids - she usually eats loads at breakfast and had lots of helpings of cereal with formula milk on. She is bf for all milk except this and the df, which is formula too. Heartbreakingly, she LOVES formula and if she even sees a bottle, lunges for it and makes excited noises! Her bf has reduced in duration, though not number of feeds, since she's been on solids, which is a about 5 weeks and she's still trying new foods all the time so how she'll react to them is a bit unpredictable, although apart from bananas she doesn't seem to have had any problems digesting anything so far)
A 9.15
S 9.30 (normally has 3 hours A time but tried a shorter one yesterday)
A 10.30
E 11.00 (bf)
A 11.30
E 12.15 (solids, this is her main meal of the day to avoid night time wind/gassiness!)
A 12.45
S 1.30
A 2.30
E 3.30 (bf)
A 4.00
E 4.45 (solids)
E 5.15 (bf)
A 5.45 bath and wind down for bed
S 6.15

after that she woke up twice before her 10.00pm df but was realtively easy to settle back to sleep. She slept for exactly 2 hours before the first waking, which is quite typical.

Hope you can make some sense of it! Thanks again
Louise

[Flossie's Mum]

Sorry, forgot to say about other things I've tried

httj - worked once only (the first time), I tried it for about 4 days for every nap and then gave up, although when I'm settling her after she wakes during the night, to make sure she stays alseep after I walk away, I tend to sit with her for 10 mins to httj then

w2s - couldn't get this to work, although I only tried it for a few days as she often spotted me then become even more awake. I was sucessful a few times in the sense that she stayed asleep but gave a shuffle and so seemed to be reacting to my touch, however she still woke up at the 35 mion mark just the same

sh-pat - this worked when she was younger but seems less effective now, however its all I feel I have at my disposal to try to sooth her back to sleep when she wakes so I tend to do a variation of it (sometimes with soft talking instead of shing, or back rubbing instead of patting), but she fights me most of the time, thrashing around, sometimes yelping, bashing my head, etc. She sleeps opn her side so I've tried moving her back to her side and doing this, I've tried doing it with her on her back, I've tried stepping back, within her line of sight and away from it when she starts to fight me to see if she settles heself (she doesn't, she just gets more hysterical)

Are there any other interventions, other than apop and pu/pd?

[~Sara~]

Hmmm, I'm wondering if we need to get a bit firmer on letting her resettle herself.  I have a strict rule for DH and I during the night: we do not go in to DS unless he is crying his "I need you cry!!"  We let him babble, coo, talk, mantra cry, fuss all by his lonesome for as long as he wants, but we do not go in.  I'm wondering if your LO is just needing that last little push to be an independent sleeper.  Now, I think OT is still playing a role in all of this.  But at night, I wonder what would happen if you stopped going in to her and just hung back and waited.  She might have a few rough nights, but I think that will help rule out any prop possibilities.

Have you thought about getting rid of the DF?  She's on 3 good meals a day, and I wonder if maybe it's just disrupting her sleep and she's just now in a habit of waking for it.  Tracy did say that many LOs are ready to drop it at ~7 months.  Your LO probably isn't waking up for it because she's hungry, so I wonder if we try to get rid of it, it might help her sleep longer for that first chunk of night sleep (which is the deep sleep phase--very restorative sleep). 

What do you think about that?  Also, do you think she is really hungry for that 3 am feed?  Do you think it might be time to drop all night feeds?

I know you said you've tried w2s...have you tried it at night?  Or, when she wakes up before 10, just resettle like you have been and let her go.  Just something to consider.

Are there any other interventions, other than apop and pu/pd?

If she isn't really crying and needing you, then I think the best thing for her is for you to hang back and leave her to it (resettling herself).  It's a learning process...doesn't mean that there won't be tears or crying.  But when she gets to the point where she really needs your comfort, you will be there and can lay a hand on her and reassure her.  You can try PU/PD or shh/pat then (maybe modify it to just patting or just shushing...see if she likes it modified).  A note about PU/PD: it's not a calming tool like shh/pat; it's a sleep training tool.

Okay!!  Do you think we could try those things for her nights for a little while before tackling her naps more?  I know the issues are related, but I wonder if we could get a foothold by working on nights first as that will set up her days better.

What do you think, Jane?  Does this sound like a reasonable approach or would you suggest something different?

*hugs* I hope YOU are doing okay, hon.

[Flossie's Mum]

Thanks for this, we had yet another backwards night again last night where she was really wide awake at 2 and wouldn't settle or act even a little bit sleepy until after 4, its what she used to do before we started bw-ing and I thought we'd left it all behind! 2 bad ( ie 35 min only) naps to9day aswell. You're right that I somehow need to intervene less, I just don't know how, or what to do if that doesn't work. Whenever I hang back her noises always escalate into a full cry plus she's then wide awake aswell - do I just need to keep waiting for longer for several nights until it 'sticks?' She's going into her own room next week so maybe that will help.

I haven't dropped the 2 night feeds yet because I believe they have to be 16lb before their stomach is big enough to hold enough for a whole night, and Floss is only 14lb, a petite baby! We give her formula for the df and then usually get the best strech of sleep in the whole 24 hours right afterwards, so I think it sort of knocks her out. I'll try ANYTHING though, so is that one the best one to drop first if I only drop one til she's a bit bigger? When she wakes for it do I just stop giving it to her, or phase it out by bringing it forward gradually? I'll keep on with modified shpat to try to settle her but sometimes I'm doing it for 2 or more hours and even rocking seemed to have lost its effectiveness last night. Do you think its worth starting pu/pd?