Hi,
I need some help to deal with night-wakings in my 19 week old baby girl. Most nights she is waking three times between her 10.30pm dreamfeed and morning. The first waking (often between 1-2am) is the most difficult to deal with and often lasts up to two hours, and ends with me feeding her the 3am feed. Sometimes she settles after the feed, sometimes not.
Some background:
We have had her on a routine since two weeks old, but we originally started with the Gina Ford routines. These did not work for our baby and we found that they were not only too rigid, but also expected too much, too early. My daughter has only recently been able to stay awake for two hours at a time, and even then she is often cranky and fractious by the time I put her down. But I found that if I put her down too early she was waking up to 7 times each night.
We've had lots of problems with feeding, and she is currently not gaining weight at a healthy rate. She is 19 weeks old and is only just over 5kg despite being 3.5kg at birth. So we had to start supplementing formula in the evenings, but I still give her breast milk for all other feeds. Since birth she has never breastfed for more than about 6 minutes at a time, and only from one side, and if I try to make her eat more, she screams and arches her back. So I have been pumping and feeding her from a bottle, which means she eats more but not really enough (100mL per bottle or thereabouts). This is why I'm not attempting to drop the night feeds yet.
I believe she is suffering from reflux, and we are waiting on an appointment to get her tested for this. In the meantime I have propped up her cot at one end and I hold her upright after feeding. This seems to have helped a bit.
She goes to bed with a dummy, but spits it out after she is drifting off. We do use it through the night to settle her, and again she usually spits it out once she's drifting off. I haven't been able to wean her off swaddling yet (she uses a miracle blanket), and the times that I have put her down in a sleeping bag or half-swaddled, she wakes constantly and flails her arms around and scratches her head and face. This means her arms aren't free for her to suck her fingers to self soothe, even though she likes to do this through the day. She can sleep in a sleeping bag if she co-sleeps with me for her first nap of the day, but it is still always a short one of no more than 40 minutes.
Here is the routine we aim for, although it is often different. The evening bedtime routine is always consistent, however.
6am wake up
E – breastfeed (usually only lasts 5 minutes or less)
A – Quiet play and then some lullabies
S – 7-7.15am to 8am in sleeping bag in bed with mum
A – Time in bouncy chair or on playmat (a bit of tummy time)
E – 9am (breast milk from a bottle)
A – Playing with mum and then wind-down
S – 10am – 11.30am
A – Nappy and clothing change
E – 12noon (breast milk from a bottle)
A – Ride in the stroller or carrier
S – 1.30 – 3pm
E – 3pm (breast milk from a bottle)
A – Time in bouncy chair, baby gym or playmat, then cuddles with mum and wind-down
S – 4.30 – 5.10pm
A – Low key playing with daddy, bath at 6pm
E – 6.15pm (formula from a bottle)
S – Asleep by 6.30pm (NOTE: We do AES at this time as a leftover from the Gina Ford routines, and it has always worked so we didn't want to change it)
DF – 10.30 or 11pm
DF – around 2.30 or 3am
Can someone help me with the night wakings? I am very unsure how to deal with them, as she hates being rolled onto her side for shh/pat (I usually just pat her shoulder, which is less and less effective the later into the night it is - sometimes we have sat by her cot patting for over an hour). Also, she doesn't really cry when she wakes up, she shouts. I have tried leaving her to shout (in case I was attending to her too soon) but it always escalates to desperate yelling and eventually crying. I feel that leaving her to shout is the same as leaving her to cry it out. She's just not a very crying baby. The sound she makes is more like a very loud “UH! UH!” with some whimpering, sobbing kind of sounds in between if I don't respond.
Sorry this is so long. I hope someone can help me!
