Early waking times - aarrgghhh!!!!

[mtemte]

First of all, not sure if this is the right board to post this on but....

Our LO has been an early waker from about 2.5 months old - she is now 5.5 months. Reflux baby on a 3 hour feeding schedule who has been a terrible sleeper! We started PUPD this week and, I dont want to get my hopes up too soon, but it seems to be going well.

The problem is the early wakings. So a typical day is as follows:

5.30am/6am wake up
E8am
A
S 8.30-9.30
A
E 11am
S 11.30 - 12.30 / 1pm
A
E 2pm
A
S 3.30 - 4.30
E 5pm
7pm BT
10.30 DF
4am wakings start

That is an approximate day since starting PUPD on Sunday. Sometimes we have sleep after a feed as thats the way it works out. Also, she is not hungry when she wakes and up to this week she was taking a feed between 2am - 3am. She seems to have dropped that on her own.

Up until this week, there were several wakings a night. SInce doing PUPD, the wakings have reduced but she is still waking from 4am which is what she has always done. She will wake at 4am, settle and then wake every 20 - 30 mins til wake up time of 6am ish. Since doing PUPD, she woke 2 nights at 4.30am, stayed awake in her cot on her own until about 5.30am / 5.45am and th en fell  back to sleep on her own and one morning she was awake at 5.30am for the day! This morning I tried feeding her when she woke (but I waited to see if she would self settle and she didnt so I fed her then which may have been too long a wait? Should I have fed her immediately?) but she was wide awake for about 45 minutes after the feed. She still settled on her own but of course ideally if we could get her to sleep through, that would be better.

Any ideas please? We have made huge progress this week so far so Im very proud of her but I was just wondering if there is anything else I can do to get her out of the habit of waking every morning at 4am. Just to add, some wakings this week, I have heard her pass wind so maybe that was waking her but as she has always woken at these times, I think its more a habit than anything. I tried stirring her at 3.15 this morning (wake to sleep?) to see if that would get rid of the waking but it only delayed it. She still woke at 4.30am, 4.45am and 5am.

Any ideas please?

[mtemte]

Is this not the correct board for this post? 

[Ima shel Alon]

Hi there!
It sounds to like either it's habitual waking or she is ready for some more A time. Is she waking exactly at the same time every morning? Is it always 4-4:15? If so then it could well may be habitual waking and I would try W2S IIWY, like you did yesterday morning. It does take time to work, though. You can read about it more here: How do I address habitual wakings? (wake-to-sleep and other methods)
I am also thinking that she is UT and needs more A time because her naps are all 1h which usually indicates UT. I would work on increasing her A time gradually, by 10-15min and stick with the new A time for 4 days. If you are getting better naps (1.5-2h) and got rid of the EW then great, and if not then you can come back and post your EASY after the A increase and we can have a look if things changed at all or stayed the same (and think why).
There is a big jump in A times at this age as LO is preparing to drop from 3 naps to 2 naps - you can read about it more here: All about the 3-2 transition- 5/6 months.
HTH

[mtemte]

Hi Ima,
Thanks so much for your response.
I dont know a lot about this but she has always woken at 4am - I dont know why! Even when she was night feeding, she would feed at maybe 2am or 2.30am and she would STILL wake between 4am and 4,15am! Like clockwork! And she wasnt waking from hunger as she had just had a feed an hour or two earlier. Then from 4am, the wakes would be every 30 minutes or so (every 20 minutes on a bad night)!
I did try wake to sleep the other night and it pushed the wake off by 30 minutes so instead of 4am it was 4.30am when she woke. Is this something that I need to continue on a nightly basis to see a difference? Do they usually start sleeping longer with this method?

I dont know about increasing her A time as even at the moment with max 2.75 hours A time, she is very close to overtired trying to get her to sleep..... Her naps have only been this long from this week since I started PUPD. Before this week, she would sleep 30 - 40 mins in the morning, perhaps 1 hour (1.5 if we were lucky) and 30 mins in the late afternoon and she was waking up to 10 times a night!!!!

Would you suggest I try wake to sleep a few nights in a row to see if that makes any difference?
Thanks so much for all the support!

[Ima shel Alon]

Is this something that I need to continue on a nightly basis to see a difference? Do they usually start sleeping longer with this method?

Yes, try it for at least a week before stopping with.
If you are a bit afraid to mess with A times right now then I would leave it for a few days till she is better in settling herself. When she is in a stage where she can go down by herself and settle into sleep alone (within 10-15min) and you still get 1h naps then I'd start pushing those A times.