7+ month old wakes up for 2-3 hours after 3hrs sleep at night

[Clueless Mum]

Hi,

I am new to this forum and I just started DD on EASY this week.

She has been waking up for about 1-2 hours every night, and yesterday she was awake for 3 hours from 12:30am to 3:30am! She is sleepy but can't seem to go back to sleep but keeps on rolling about in bed.

I've read the sample routines and most 7  months old have at least 3 hours A time, but DD gets very sleepy after 2 hours A time. I've been trying to follow a 4 hour routine, but that won't fit in 3 hours A time.

Our typical day is as follow:-

7:30 Wake and breastfeed
8:00 Activity
8:30 Breakfast then play
9:15 Wind-down
9:30 Sleep (only about 45min) follow by PU/PU
11:30 Breastfeed
12:30 Lunch then play
1:30 Wind-down
1:45 Sleep (30min-1.5 hour)
3:30 Breastfeed then play
6:30 Dinner
8:00 Bedtime routine
8:30 Sleep

So far, she can only fall sleep when I pat her. Please help!

[*Ali*]

Once they start solid food around 6mo it is fine for them to go longer than 4hrs between some of the milk feeds. If she isn't a big eater of solid food just yet you may wish to offer a top-up BF before the nap, just try not to feed to sleep or have the BF as part of the wind down.

She is probably just used to sleeping after 2hrs so you need to slowly extend that time by 10-15 mins every 3 days or so to give her a chance to get used to it. Otherwise she is getting in an UT/OT cycle where she hasn't had enough A time to do a full, restorative nap of 1.5hrs+ for that first nap and then she gets OT later in the day because A times are too long.

[Clueless Mum]

Thanks, Ali.

She slept within an hour of her night wake yesterday so we managed to squeeze in a longer A time this morning. Will work on extending her A time and hopefully it would solve her short naps and night wakes. Will update.

[*Ali*]

Fingers crossed.

[Clueless Mum]

Her NW has been more frequent, but these few nights, the longest that she stayed up was an hour, so an improvement there.

Her routine has been haywire, mainly because of the weekends and also because she has been so tired. Managed to extend her A time to 3 hours last week, but this week, had to work hard to have even 2 hours A time.

What do u advise, extend her A time regardless of all her sleepy signs or just let her nap?

[*Ali*]

Did you extend the A times gradually or in big jumps? She may have got OT if you extended it too quickly. I would try just doing an extra 10-15 minutes every 3 days or so. So that would take you 12-18 days to move comfortably from 2 to 3hr A times.

I would cut the A times back again and then up them slowly when she has got over the OT.

Is she sick or in discomfort do you think? Then I would hold off extending the A times until that is resolved.

Is she going through any developmental milestones right now? Rolling, sitting, crawling etc.? Those can make LO more tired than usual too.

[Clueless Mum]

Yes, she just started sitting / standing, and perhaps teething too.

For A time, she would start to pull her ear after an hour of A time. But when I try to engage her in other activities, the sleepiness signs seem to disappear, so I managed to extend her A time by quite abit. Last night, she was up for about 1.5 hours before I fed her and she fell asleep by herself in her cot.

[*Ali*]

Maybe cut the A time back to give her a chance to adjust and then up them gradually again.