8mo multiple NWs - tried everything, nothing's working!

[Natka]

Apologies in advance for a long post and thank you for reading...

I have an 8mo DD who wakes up 4- 6 times a night and we are all exhausted! I did a lot of AP in the first few months and we had lots of props to get her to sleep incl. rocking and feeding to sleep. I stopped feeding her to sleep and rocking when she 5.5 months and put her on EASY then. We used PUPD and shush/pat to teach her to fall asleep in her cot, which worked quite quickly and since then she’s put in her cot awake and falls asleep there both at naps and nighttime. However, she still wakes up a LOT during the night. She’s in our bedroom, we are thinking of moving her out in the next month or so into her own room but I would really like to get her sleeping better as don’t want spending my nights having to go to her several times each night.

We have a good bedtime ritual, which we stick to every night. She goes in to the cot awake and DH or I stay in the room with her until she falls asleep. If she cries we shush and sometimes rub her back. If she gets hysterical, we do PUPD. We’ve been doing this for months though and there isn’t much progress, so I wonder if we are doing something very wrong.

During her naps, we do wind down, she goes into the cot awake and then can take between 5 and 40 mins to fall asleep. I’ve tried leaving the room and sometimes she’d fall asleep in the room on her own but most of the time she goes ballistic when I try to leave the room so I stay and either just sit there or shush her. I try to have minimal physical contact but sometimes will rub her back. I rarely PUPD for naps. 

Every night, she wakes up 40 mins after falling asleep and then can wake up another 2 –3 times before midnight and then 3-4 times after midnight. When she wakes up before midnight, she screams, and I mean blood curdling screaming every time!! I have no idea why she does it, as soon as I shush or touch her, she can go back to sleep within a couple of minutes but sometimes it may be an hour or two. Same during the night, I can hear her wake and she starts crying/screaming straight away. I would usually shush and rub her back to calm her down.

We even tried to do CC but she ends up crying so hard she vomits and after this happening twice, we’ve sworn to never do it again as it’s too distressing for all of us!

I used to dreamfeed at 10pm and night feed around 3am but dropped these feeds yesterday and she didn’t seem bothered so we’ll see how that goes over the next few days.

Here is our EASY that we try to stick to as much as possible.

Wake up: 6.30am - 7am
E: 7am – milk & cereal/porridge
A: 2h – 2.5h
S: 9am (usually 1h 20mins but occasionally only 40mins)
E: 11am – milk
    12.30pm – Lunch solids
A: 3.5h - 4h
S: 2pm (between 40mins and 1h 30mins). Sometimes I have to help her transition between sleep cycles.
E: 3pm/3.30pm – milk
    5pm/5.30pm - Dinner solids
A: 4h – 5h
E: 7pm - milk
S: 7.30pm/8pm

I have no idea what we are doing wrong and why she wakes up so much at night. Any suggestions would be very gratefully received as we are completely stumped and are really struggling.

Many thanks!

[Jem88]

Hi, could she maybe need longer A times? My LO is 4 days off being 10 months and she's always been a bad sleeper, she's only started sleeping 4.5 - 5 hour full hours and not waking an hour after going to bed this past week. All we've done is up her A times to 3 hours before her 1st nap then 4 hours before 2nd nap and then between 3.5 - 4 hours before bed, and she's then slept a full 4 hours after going to bed - lastnight she only woke twice (1am and 5am.)

I'm not sure if you've already tried this? but hopfully someone else might be-able to help if you have. *hugs* x

[Natka]

Thank you, Jem88. It's great to hear that things do get better!!

I do wonder if her NWs are due to our routine. DD will be 9 mo in a week's time and we only recently dropped CN (about 2 weeks ago). I think her last A time is too long so she may well be OT before BT however when she had CN, her last A time was about 2.5h- 3h and she still had the same number of NWs, maybe she was UT then? It's all so confusing, I think I'm so tired that I can't see the wood for the trees.

Last night was really bad. She was asleep by 7.50pm (last A time was 4.5h) and then awake at 8.30pm till 9pm. She then slept till 1.50am when she was up until 3.20am. During that time she cried, fell asleep and woke up numerous times, seemed like she wasn't able to enter deep sleep so kept waking up. We did shush and PUPD. She then woke up again at 4.10am but went to sleep quickly with a bit of shush and then was up for the day at 6.30am. We are all shattered!!

I will try increasing her first A time to hopefully even them out throughout the day and see if that helps. I've tried increasing her first A time before but she acts so tired and it sometimes resulted in a failed first nap. It's just so frustrating as I've analysed her routine going back weeks and weeks (I keep record of everything every day) but can't see any pattern to NWs related to A times or naps. It all seems rather random!! x

[Bex09]

Hi there, I think there are a couple of things going on here. Firstly because you have tried CC your DD may well have lost trust and that is why she gets so worked up when you leave her. You will probably need to work to regain trust, like you are doing, by staying with her until she falls asleep and gradually weaning this later.

I also think that you could try to extend the first A time so that it is nearer to 3hrs. Hopefully this will give you a longer nap and balance your day out better. I think you are right and that last A time is too long and probably causing OT NW. If you can push the first nap later and get longer naps then the last A time will be shorter if that makes sense?

[Natka]

Thank you Bex09. I'm not sure if CC is the issue here as at some point for a couple of weeks I managed to get her to fall asleep on her own in a room (I'd still be in the room but hide outside of her line of vision! and then things got worse, she started screaming every time I tried to leave/hide, so that's when we tried CC. Maybe CC did make things worse, who knows... won't be doing that again for sure as although I know it works for a lot of babies, it really didn't for us.

Last two nights went like this:

Night 1:
8pm - BT (fell asleep)
9.55pm - NW (resettled quickly with shush and a bit of touch)
11.50pm - NW (resettled in a couple of mins with shush/touch)
1.50am - 2.30am - NW (kept falling asleep and waking up every few minutes, I shushed and rubbed her back, she settled in the end)
7am - woke up

Night 2 (last night):
8pm - BT (fell asleep)
8.50pm - NW (couple of mins to re-settle with shush/pat)
11.50pm - NW (couple of mins to re-settle with shush/touch)
2.15am - NW (couple of mins to re-settle with shush/touch)
5am - NW (couple of mins to re-settle with shush/touch)
6am - woke up (too early, usually I can resettle her to sleep a bit longer, but she pooped so we had to get up)

I agree that our A times are quite uneven during the day and her last one is too long, however she just can't do much longer than 2 hours of A time first thing in the morning, I'm not sure how to extend it as I don't want her to go OT, although she probably is by the end of the day but she won't do a CN any more. This morning I kept her up 2.5 hours as she woke up early I didn't want her first nap to start at 8 am, so she went down for a nap at 8.30am, still early but she couldn't keep her eyes open. I probably need to get her BT moved forward a bit so that she's asleep by 7.30pm at the latest, but it's tricky as she's not a great eater so I'm struggling to fit all her milk feeds and solids in during the day as she won't eat solids an hour after milk, we have to wait closer to 2 hours and then after dinner (around 5.30pm) she's not hungry for her pre-bed milk..  

[LouiseV]

Hey, I'm struggling with similar issues at the moment so *hugs* because I know how hard it is.
One thing I am swearing by as we go through this is using loud white noise and a swaddle-type things (arms free) for deep pressure. I also raised the end of the bed so my son's head is raised slightly and have tried treating teething which is worse at night.

Once he understood that feeds do not happen until 5am at the earliest and we went through 4 or 5 nights of being consistent with that (using PUPD and patting) he seems to be doing much better.

He also has a cuddly blanket which I helped him attach to over several weeks which I think he gets comfort from when he wakes up.

Keep asking questions, I am sure there is a solution in here somewhere! I agree with the comments about CC, it won't help them learn they are safe and can go back to sleep on their own - good on you for ditching it.

All the best

[Natka]

Thanks, LouiseV! We still swaddle too (in a Woombie) and use loud white noise for naps and BT. For when out and about, we have a Sleep Sheep, DD doesn't really need it to fall asleep while outside but it works well as a noise barrier from the street noise. I've not done any dream feeds or night feeds now for 3 or 4 days and so far so good, she is not bothered at all and hasn't asked for them which tells me she didn't really need/want them. It was more me as she doesn't drink milk well during the day due to reflux so night feeds were a way to get extra milk into her but I've stopped now as she's eating solids quite well (touch wood).

I've been raking my brains as to why PUPD and shush/pat haven't worked for us as well as they do for some others to stop NWs. I'm pretty sure we've been quite consistent and have been doing it correctly as per the book but still, a few months on, we are still not where we'd like to be and I'm just about to give up trying to figure it out and am thinking I have to just wait and hope that she grows out of it! Annoying thing is, between 6 and 15 weeks she slept really well, waking up for 2 feedings a night (11pm and 3am) but that was it!

[LouiseV]

We had a perfect sleeper for that age too! But that's before they develop mature sleep cycles so lots of babies fall apart after that.

you know what? I think you should get her checked by your GP (and try and get them to hold off on the sleep advice!) and if theres nothing wrong medically you might just have to stick with your consistency (and try pain relief for teething perhaps?)

With this age you don't actually pick them up at all unless they are hysterical - I found the clarifications around what to do for this age bracket with PUPD quite helpful on this forum. You leave them in bed to resettle themselves and sit with them, patting if you need to, shushing and lying them back down when they sit or stand.

[Natka]

Ohhh, we've not had great experience of GPs/HVs. We had a lot of trouble getting DD's reflux recognised and then treated and all that time she was in so much pain, I'm still very angry at how complacent health professionals can be where babies are concerned as they think it's OK to leave them in pain as long as it's something they'll eventually grow out of! Thankfully it's OK now as she's properly medicated. I did mention her sleep to her Pediatrician and HV. The Pediatrician just said it was common and HV suggested CIO, so not very helpful. I don't think she's teething at the moment but I'm always on the look out in case it's that and then would give her some pain relief.

I'll re-read the chapters again to refresh my memory to make sure we are doing the PUPD and shush/pat right. She doesn't pull up yet but yeah, I take your point about not picking up at this age, I don't do it a lot but should probably limit it a bit more to when she's hysterical only... PU does calm her down though, sometimes she needs one or two PUPDs and she settles but if I just shush/pat, she sometimes goes on crying for ages. Oh, I just don't know, I'm so confused!! 

[LouiseV]

I was doing EXACTLY the same as you. The thing that made all the difference was no more picking up. I would even climb IN the cot sometimes to settle him, and there were 3 nights of 2 hour wakeups - yep. One night there was even a 3 hour one. It was HARD. he cried and cried and would drift off then wake up again. But for those 4 nights I was consistent and what do you know - last night was night 5 and it was SOOO much better.

I think my LO was confused about what was expected of him - he'd cry so I'd pick him up (hed comfort straight away) or else sometimes I left him but patted him. In the end I decided NO picking up, and if I absolutely had to it would be for 5 seconds and then straight back down - even if he was still screaming.

he knew I was there and he knew he wasn't alone - and I think he grew to know what was expected of him. I am onto the next stage now which is leaving him to fall asleep without me in the room (this may take some time!!!!!!) so he doesnt even expect me there when he wakes up.

I wrote down my plan and pinned it up above his cot so when I was ready to give in (and hubby was ready to walk out) we could both look at it and know it was a plan, we had a timeframe and we were committed. I also downloaded some games onto my iPhone and hid lollies under the cot to keep me going haha

[Natka]

It's so great that you are seeing an improvement, hopefully it'll continue to get better for you. I'm going to try no PU, fingers crossed it works for us too!!

Last night was quite bad. She had rubbish naps during the day and was OT at BT. She went down at 7.15pm and then was up at 9pm (I did 2 PUPDs and shush/pat), 1.25am (shush/pat), 3am (shush/pat), then was awake from 4.10am until 5.40am (I didn't PU, just PD when she'd get up on all fours and shush/pat, she kept falling asleep and then waking up crying a few minutes later), then she was up again at 6.20am so I BF and she slept till 7.20am. Phew, feel exhausted!!

I agree, she maybe a bit confused as sometimes she's picked up and others not, so there is an inconsistency there as it's hard to judge at what point of crying to start PU and she's obviously not able to make the distinction so it's probably just confusing her....

[darcys mum]

This sounds exactly the same as what I'm going through now with my 8mo. The frustrating thing with him though is that he has great naps during the day and a couple of weeks ago he slept through 11hrs straight for 6 nights in a row then back to this . Then slept on Saturday 11hrs through, then all week back to waking every 2-3hrs! I can't find any reason or pattern as to what is going on so I KNOW your frustration!!
I have made some mistakes as it has been going on soooo long, and I'm ssoooo tired that I have recently been giving in and either sleeping with DS on the couch or popping him in bed with us but it's no good for anyone and none of us sleep particularly well this way anyhow! I have to wonder if it is age/mental leap related? I know that most of the babies in my mothers group (bar 1 who has slept through every night since 8 weeks old!) are all not sleeping all that well either......

[Bex09]

Hi hun have still been following along and you have been getting great support and advice. Just wanted to ask if you are sure your DD's reflux meds are still keeping things under control? PU/PD can really upset refluxers. What do you think?