When will my DD sleep for more than 3hrs at night?

[Rachel600]

Hi

My DD2 is 6 months today and still is struggling to sleep well at night and in the day. At the moment she has a cold and cough and I know that I need to do anything to help her through the night at the moment. But I am panicking as it was bad enough before the cold and now it could be even worse. DD1 is ill as well so when DD2 wakes up and screams I am feeding her (bf) and putting her in the double bed in her room with me otherwise her crying wakes DD1 up (because she is ill) and then I have both to look after, at most I am getting 5hrs sleep at night (normally 4) and with both of them up in the night I have no energy in the day.

When DD2 is better then I will go back to not feeding her as much ( well 1 feed not 3!!) and rocking, holding etc. But I am so worried that its going to take ages to even get her back to what she was before the cold. I am exhausted and finding it hard to cope with the lack of sleep.

DD2 has never needed much sleep in the day and mainly has short naps, she can extend them but not often. She never seems tired always is happy - well in the day, not so much at night when she wakes up - She can cope with 3hr activity time easily. I have tried putting her down at different times, after 2 hrs, 2hrs 10 etc. She can put herself to sleep.

We dont have a routine as she is so erractic and this makes everything really hard. I just cant work her out. I try and work on the Easy method, it worked so well with DD1.

She has started solids, a bit of baby rice, pear, carrot twice a day.


Please help as I am just so tired and need some advice. Thank you.

[Rachel600]

Hi Jane

Just wondering if you could give me a bit of advice regarding dd2, since I posted her cold has got much better but I had her weighed as she is abit thin, she is ebf and has had solids for two weeks (two meals a day). So she is under weight nearly on the 2% bit in the red book. SO maybe she really is hungry when she wakes at night. But what Im finding is that although she is now on three meals a day she is hardly eating alot and here I am having her awake every 3 hrs at night for food again. Thats all that seems to settle her, ive just tried for 2hrs to get her to sleep (that was after a bf as well, so she has had 3 bf since 7pm and its now 2am, its like having a newborn) and she was sucking on my arm really hard so i fed her and now she is asleep again. Waht im worried about is how to help her eat more in the day, do i keep feeding her at night??AM really worried about her weight so dont know what to do?
Her routine is all over the place but I will post a general idea:
7am  Bf
8am solids
9:30 ish sleep
10;25 Awake
11:00 bf
12:00 solids
12:30 ish sleep
1:15ish awake
3:00-4  ish bf
she has a catnap between 3 and 5 most days
5:30 solids
then bath and story and bf asleep by 7:30.

I know she is awake alot but sometimes she does sleep for longer than the 45 mins and sometimes less - 30 mins. On Monday she had about 1hr10mins sleep all day!!!! I would do more walking with the pram or even car seat to help her sleep but with the snow we have tended to be based at home, dd1 has had enough of it!! Also a great opportunity to really get working on dd2 routine but no success!!!

Any suggestions would be really appreciated 

[~ Vik ~]

Hi Rachel   I will leave the routine tweaking to Jane (she's much better than I am!) but will try to help with your feeds.

When DD2 is better then I will go back to not feeding her as much ( well 1 feed not 3!!)

I just want to mention that in breastfed babies, needing 2 night feeds (even 3 during growth spurts, and there is one at 6mo) at this age is not uncommon.  We were doing a dream feed and one other night feed until about 9mo when I finally got the courage to drop the dream feed!  So when she's healthy, I wouldn't drop from 3 feeds to 1 - if you feel it necessary to drop a feed, I would go from 3 to 2.  The best way to do that is to set an interval (like 4h) before which you will not feed.  So if bedtime feed is at 7pm, then you would not feed again until 11pm.  If she wakes at 10, then you would work to settle another way.  If she wakes at 1055, then go ahead and feed.  Then you would not feed again until another 4h has passed - so if you fed at 1130, next feed would be no earlier than 330.  Does that make sense?
Here's an outside link too with some gentle methods for encouraging fewer night wakings:  http://www.kellymom.com/bf/weaning/weaning-night.html

 

So she is under weight nearly on the 2% bit in the red book.

Don't let yourself get stressed by the growth charts - being on the 2nd percentile doesn't necessarily mean that she's underweight, just that she's small.  A few things to keep in mind:
- are you, your DH, or other members of your families small?  Babies follow the genetics of their families, so if anyone in your family is small it's reasonable to expect that your dd2 just may be petite, rather than underweight.  For example, Dylan is quite tall for his age (90th percentile) but very slim considering his height (50th percentile).  Most books would have me panicking, because the centiles for height and weight should be roughly the same, so by some thinking Dylan is quite underweight.  However, when you look at my DH, he has always been tall (6foot1) and very slim (150pounds if he's lucky) - so it's clearly genetics at play.
- was your doctor using the growth chart for ebf babies?  Ebf babies follow a different growth curve than formula fed babies so it's important that her growth is plotted on the correct chart.
- the whole growth chart system is based on data from tons of babies, and their average growth rates, with the 50th percentile being smack in the middle.  For every baby in the 98th percentile, there is going to be a baby in the 2nd.  There's nothing wrong with following the 2nd percentile!  The keys are steady weight gain (which can be slow, but she should not be losing weight), satisfaction between feeds, plenty of wet and dirty diapers, and meeting developmental milestones.
I'm starting to ramble, so here are some links for you to check out:
Normal growth of breastfed babies:  http://www.kellymom.com/babyconcerns/growth/index.html
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=94121.0
http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=63598.0

Let me know what you think?  And if you have any other questions?

[Shiv52]

Has she always been on the 2% centile line?  Or on the lower end of the centiles?  In terms of weight its more important shes not dropping between centiles....like fromthe 95th-25th.   Those NHS red books have the growth charts for FF babies.  Only know for sure as i asked my HV a few weeks ago when she was expressing concern that my DD2 was underweight.