DF causing NW?

[Leewh]

My 5 mo has gotten a df between 10-11 pm for past two mo. Initially i picked her up asleep, fed her, and laid her down still asleep.  Lately she's been waking up before I go in to get her and I've found myself waiting for her to wake up so I can get her and nurse her back to sleep. I think the DF has caused habitual waking?  Does this mean I should drop the df? 

[Erin M]

Sometimes the df can cause unsettled sleep, that was certainly the case for my dd2 (though it worked great for the other 2, go figure!).  You could definitely try dropping it and just soothe her back to sleep by other means if she wakes at that time. 

[Erin M]

Though, as I hit the "post" button, it occurred to me that your wakings could indicate that your routine needs a tweak.  Can you post what you're doing right now?

[Leewh]

Hi Erin, I wanted to get a couple more days under my belt as I was tweaking A times.  Here's an approx EASY

6:30  wake up
6:30 - 8:50  nurse, activity
8:50 - 10:50 nap
10:50 - 1:10 nurse, activity
1:10 - 3:00 nap
3:00 - 5:00 nurse, activity
5:00 - 5:30 nap
5:30 - 7:30 activity, nurse around 7.
7:30 bedtime

She goes down to bed awake, swaddled w/ one arm out, with pacifier.  Her nightwakings are fairly consistent...

1st NW between 10 - 12.  falls asleep nursing, put back down asleep
2nd NW between 2-4am.  nurse.  sometimes falls asleep, other times is up in cot for 1 hr before falling asleep on her own.  (we call this her cot party)

She also typically has a few unsettled moments at night that just requires a shh/pat or hand on her chest to help her settle down/contin sleeping. 

Lately I've noticed increased fussiness, drooling, and shoving her fist in her mouth which makes me think there's some teething pain going on too.  Is there anything in her routine that stands out to you???

[Erin M]

other times is up in cot for 1 hr before falling asleep on her own.  (we call this her cot party)

This generally points to a need for even more A time -- though I'm guessing you have been working on increasing your A time.  My guess is you're probably headed towards dropping the cat nap.  If it doesn't mess with your long naps, I'd continue bumping A times up very slowly and gradually until you run out of time for the cat nap. 

Are her night nursings every 4 hours apart, or does that vary?

[Leewh]

Thanks for response Erin.

I've been slowly trying to increase her A so we could drop catnap. We're at around 2.5 hr A now. It's making for some challenging scheduling this far, with longer A for first two naps then 2 hr A before and after catnap so we can keep same bedtime. The night wakings were consistently about 4 hrs after each feed, which is also daytime length between feedings. I was going to try cluster feeding before bed again but she has been refusing to BF sometimes.

However all this was before the past two days...  She's been waking almost every hour crying out. Teething pain is in full swing now. The poor babe is constantly frantically gnawing on anything she can get into her mouth. Been giving her meds before bed but still lots of wakings. So discouraging because we were seeing good improvements in routine and sleep. Now it's awful again: 20-45 min naps and tons of NW.

So. Very. Tired.

[Erin M]

Hey hun, sorry to have been MIA, had a whole lot of family in town and lots of craziness!  How are things now?