Author Topic: my 5 month old wakes up at 3am and its not hunger, please help  (Read 1521 times)

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Offline dacil

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Hi my Hudson has since he turned 3 and half months has been waking up at 3 am. He is now 25 weeks old and is now not only waking up at 3am but also at 4 and at 5.

This is what his routine looks like:
How old is your child?  25 weeks (born 2 weeks before due date)
weight: 17.63 pounds (8 kilos)

What’s his/her daily routine?
  E 7am -  formula milk approx 185mls

  S depends sometimes goes back to sleep after he eats his bottle and sometimes he´s up until 9:45 ( this could be anything from 45 mins to 1 1/2 hours). I never let him sleep longer than 2 hours. this is hard for me because im just to tired to play with him at 7 after his bottle.

  E 11 - formula milk approx 185mls

  A: 12:20 bath

  S 1 sleeps 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours

  E 3 formula approx 100mls and 180mls of breastmilk

  S 5 for 45 mins to an hour

  E 6.45 formula 240mls
  S 7
  E 11:00 formula 180mls

What’s nap routine?
 I am trying to train his napping times and its starting to work, i put him to bed as soon as he starts to look tired, fussy. I take him to a dark bedroom, I put him down, cover him with a light blanket and sing the same lullaby, put his dummy in and gently stroke his eyes. After 15 mins he makes a little cry and drifts off to sleep.  Sometimes this is shorter . After 10 mins I leave.

How long are naps?  See above

What's bedtime routine? Time? Bed time is pijama and diaper change, bottle, sit with me quietly, put him to bed and then play his music box while he sucks on his dummy and plays with my hand

Do you bottle or breastfed?? I combination feed.

How much? He takes aprox. 200 ml per feed 

How many wakes per night? 3 am and I replace his dummy. And then 4 am when he's starving. I try with the dummy  for an hour and in the end I feed him (half his bottle) if he starts to cry and he falls asleep

What’s your Hudson like when waking at night? How long is he/she up?
He moves alot, he is learning how to roll and he makes lots of noise and if ignored starts to cry
When you go to him/her is she fussing or crying? Or is it a mantra cry? He makes noise and when the dummy is in he starts to drift off and then the dummy falls and he starts again, the dummy falls because he uses his hands to take the dummy out or he wants to roll with the dummy in and when it falls he starts moaning

Are there developmental issues such as teething or milestones?
He has just learned to roll and is teething

my husband and I are exhausted and my husband works 15 hours a day and its making us fight due to lack of sleep. please help

Dácil

Offline katie80

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Re: my 5 month old wakes up at 3am and its not hunger, please help
« Reply #1 on: May 18, 2013, 18:31:36 pm »
Hi Dacil and welcome to BW! :). (((Hugs))) on being exhausted, it's just no fun for anyone.

Thanks so much for all the detail in your post, that helps us to get a good feel for what's going on. :)  I think you have a couple of probable issues.  The first is that there is typically a pretty good growth spurt right around 6mo, so I think the first thing you would want to rule out is hunger.  Have you tried feeding at the first waking, 3 am to see if that gets rid of the others?  And if he's waking hungry at 4am, I'd just go ahead and feed him then rather than trying to use the dummy to get him back to sleep for so long only to end up feeding.  It's very normal for a LO his age to still have a DF and a NF.

The second thing I noticed is that his CN is quite long actually for an almost 6mo old and likely eating into his night time sleep, i.e. he may be waking so frequently in the early morning because he's just not tired enough to sleep all the way through from all the day sleep.  I'd start cutting it to 30min if you want BT to stay at 7pm, or keep it at 45min and push BT out to 7:30/45.  He's likely getting close to needing to drop that CN, otherwise it will continue to interfere with night sleep.  Have a read through this link and let me know what you think... All about the 3-2 transition- 5/6 months. And no matter how tired you are, I wouldn't let him go back to sleep after his 7am feed (I know, sorry! :-[) That is just causing his day sleep rhythms to be off and will more likely encourage the NWs rather than get rid of them. 

Finally, it sounds to me like he might have a dummy prop if he needs it to go back to sleep in the middle of the night.  I'd try working on the hunger and routine issues first, but if the NWs still don't get better, I think you might need to think about either ditching the paci or teaching him how to replug himself (most LOs can start to do this around 7mo or so).

Hope that helps... let me know your thoughts!