Hourly NW's 3.5 months old... help please!

[FifisMom]

Hello everyone,
I am going completely crazy with my LD who is 15 wo today. For the last 2 weeks she has started waking up more or less every hour during the night.
She used to be a very good night sleeper, since 6 wo she would go to bed around 8-9, sleep until 4 am, wake up for a feed (she is breastfed exclusively), and go back down without a fuss until 7 - 7.30 am.
At some point a few weeks ago I tried introducing the DF with a perspective of her sleeping through until 7 without a feed, but that backfired with DD starting to wake up multiple times during the night. We have stopped the DF and things went back to normal, for a week or so. And then it started again, I thought this was a GS first, but this has been going on for about 2 weeks now.
She will go to sleep about 7.30-8.30 (we try to put her down by 7.30 but she will usually cry and resist falling asleep until 8.30 or so), then she starts waking up around midnight and then every hour or so. I usually just go in and give her a paci (she falls asleep with it) and she is back to sleep. This lasts until about 3 or 4 am when she will not go back to sleep unless nursed, so I feed her, she goes to sleep without a fuss only to wake up again at 5am, 6am, 6.30am and finally 7am when it is time to start the day.
Since 1 week ago, I have increased her A times during the day, as she was having short naps (and I mean really short - 15 to 25 minutes, I was lucky to get 45 minutes out of her). After this things got much better with the naps, but night time sleep didnt improve, as I would have hoped. Sometimes we will get a better night, with her waking up only at 4 for a feed, and then at 6, 6.30, 7am. But these are more of an exception.

Here is what our typical day looks like:
WU - 7.00
E - 7.15 - 7.45
A - 7.45 - 8.30
S - 8.30 - 9.30
A - 9.30 - 10.00

E - 10.00 - 10.30
A - 10.30 - 11.30
S - 11.30 - 13.30/14.00

E - 14.00 - 14.30
A - 14.30 - 16.00
S - 16.00/16.15 - 17.00 - this is a catnap she has during her stroll in a pram

E - 17.00 - 17.30
A - 17.30 - 18.30, at 18.30 we start the bath

E - 19.00 - 19.30, bedtime at 19.30, but we are usually in and out of her room until 20.30

Then around midnight or 1am, her NW's start.
She falls asleep fine on her own, I put her in the crib awake and she falls asleep independantly and quickly. But sometimes during the naps she will also call me 1 or 2 times to give her the paci.

I have no idea why she is doing this, and I am so exhausted, I just cant take this any longer! My husband is proposing to let her CIO but its just too hard for me to imagine doing that. I want to try all else that is possible before resorting to CIO!!!

Please help, I am losing my mind 

[becj86]

Hi

I think if you increase her A times a little - up to 1:45 or so, you should see some better naps and that should help. She's getting on for 4 months and generally babies are on 2hr awake times at 4 months, as a gradual increase from 1.5hr at 3 months. The most important A time to increase, from what I'm seeing will be the first one in the morning - that should help her get a better nap in first thing and also help encourage her to sleep more solidly through the early hours of the morning.

After that 45min catnap - she should only be awake about 1.5hr before bedtime, otherwise she will be overtired, which is probably why you're having issues with settling for night sleep.

At this age, its absolutely normal to need two feeds at night, especially if EBF - given she's waking every hour from midnight, I'd feed then and again at 4 - means you get more sleep, so does she and she will drop those feeds. The GS at 3-4 months is a massive one, it can last 7-10 days and if you've not been feeding during it, it just goes on longer. The rule of thumb about how long between feeds at night is if she goes 4hr between feeds in the day, she can go 4hr between feeds at night.

[FifisMom]

Hi thanks a lot for your quick reply!
I will most certainly increase her first A time of the day. This was my intention, but she is yawning and rubbing her eyes already at 1 hour A time, so I still keep her up 30 minutes more. But I will definitely extend this to 2 hours if it can help her sleep better in the morning hours. Its clear that her poor night sleep affects her A times, especially the first one.
What confuses me is that she has been only taking 1 nigh feed since she was 6 wo, and now she should get 2, although she is older? I would think that she would be able to sleep trhough the night without feeding at this stage... But I will try to feed her twice and see whether this improved her and our sleep :-)
Will let you know how we progress!

What about the second A time of the day? She usually has 30 minutes A time before she eats. Does this mean that I should give her 2 more hours A  after the feed, or 2 hours all together (so 1h30 after the feed)?

Thanks a lot!

[PaulsMom]

Hi there! 

hugs on the nw's.  You have gotten great advice from Bec already.  The A time should be from wake up to sleep so this time would include her feeding time.  Try to gradually increase her A so that she's up for a total of 2 hrs in the morning.  Likely she's tired since she's had lots of broken sleep during the night so it may take a while to increase the A (ie.  increase it by 10 to 15 min every couple of days so she has time to adjust). 

HTH

[FifisMom]

Hi there,

So I am back slightly more confused than in the beginning :-) I have increased DD's A times and her naps have gradually reduced to 30 - 45 minutes over last 4 days... nights dont really seem to follow any clear pattern.

Two days ago she started having 30-40 minute naps, but at night she just woke up twice, ate and went back to sleep.

Yesterday she had 2x30min naps, and then fell asleep in her carseat in early afternoon while we were out running errands and slept 1.5 hours + she had her catnap in the early evening. In the evening I made sure to put her to sleep 1.5 hours after the catnap. It took us about 2 hours to get her to sleep  she would scream and scream. But the night was relatively good, she had 3 NW's:
3am, nursed for 15 minutes, went to sleep easily
5.30am, pooped then wouldnt go back to sleep by herself, so I nursed her for 5 minutes, then she fell asleep
6am - I just gave her the paci and she went back to sleep
And she slept until 8.15am!! We havent had such a "late" WU time since she wasnt on a routine

Today she had a 40 min nap and a 30min one and 30min catnap in the afternoon, so she was awake almost 3 hours before her BT. But she went to sleep immediately when I put her down, almost no fussing! We will see how the night progresses...

So I am completely at a loss trying to understand this little girl. Does this mean she should have short naps, and longer A time before bedtime? This goes against everything I have read until now.
Also, she is EBF and usually eats for about 30 minutes. During her night feeds though she takes 15 min at the first NF and only 5 min at the second NF, so this makes me think that she is not really hungry, and wakes up for another reason. However she will not sleep until nursed. Is this AP? How can I fix it? If I dont feed her, she wakes up every 45min-1 hour! 

[Violet's mom]

I experienced the same thing recently and decided to ditch the paci.  It took a couple of weeks but she only wakes at 2am and 5am now which is an improvement (goes to bed at 7:00pm).  Do you think its the paci?  This is about the time when they start remembering things that they fell asleep with...

[PaulsMom]

The pp does raise a good point about the paci.  are you still giving it to her when she wakes or are you feeding her?  Both can become props only it may be harder to break the feeding prop  .  Do you think she's relying on the paci to fall asleep?

Does this mean she should have short naps, and longer A time before bedtime?

  by all means no.... unfortunately.  She will still need to learn how to transition between sleep cycles during the day so that she has proper, restorative naps. She may be not resisting BT because she's exhausted. 

WRT the short naps - how long of A time are you doing?  Are you trying to extend the naps when she short naps?  For many babies this age, a short nap is developmental and they need help to transition between sleep cycles.  For my DD, I used a modified shh-pat (shh-rub her tummy).  I would go in before I expected her to wake and start to shh her.  if she started to stir more, then I'd add the rub and continue to shh her.  It took a while but I was able to extend a few of her naps and then she started to do this on her own.  This is something you might want to try to get longer naps that aren't in the stroller. 

WRT night feed duration - it's possible that she's getting a full feed at night in half the time.  Around this age, babies become more aware and may be more distracted when feeding during the day so the feed takes longer but at night there are often fewer distractions so they feed more efficiently.  After the feeds, do you feel less full?  if you think that she's not really eating at the 2nd night feeding, then you could try settling her without a feed and see how it goes.

[FifisMom]

She definitely needs her paci to fall asleep, even if it is in a car or in a stroller. It certainly has become a prop  but Im so afraid to get rid of it. She already has troubles falling asleep, I dont imagine how we would do it without a paci! Do you have any suggestions on how to get rid of it in a "peaceful" way? :-)

She has A times warying between 1h50 and 2h00 depending on her level of tiredness, e.g. this morning she looked really tired at 1h45 so I put her to sleep at 1h50.

She seems to have periods when she naps well, followed by periods of short naps. Until last week, for about 2 weeks, she had some good naps, she did 1h - 1h30 in the morning and 2h-2h30 in the afternoon + the catnap. Now she is having exclusively short naps. This has happened several times before, she would be having good naps and then all of a sudden they become short, and then go back to good. I dont understand what this means but I guess this could be something developmental. But this leads me to think that she is able to transition between sleep cycles, just that she chooses not to... :-)

When she has a short nap, usually she is all happy and playful when I come in, but I still try to extend it (I've had experiences with her, when she would be smiling but then falls asleep again for 1 hour). But lately I am not able to extend her naps. I sometimes spend up to an hour trying to extend her nap but with no success. I unfortunately never know at which time she will wake up, so I have never tried going in before and helping her to transition through. Her wakings are anywhere between 20 min and 50 min :-/

This night she went to sleep really easily (probably completely exhausted) at 7.30pm, woke up at 1.30 am and had a full feed (30 min), then woke up at 4am and had again a full feed (25 min), then woke up at 6.30 and seemed like she is up for the day, I tried to let her resettle herself until 6.50am (giving her a paci, telling her to go to sleep, but not picking up), then I picked her up at 6.50 and helped her to fall back asleep and she slept until 8am!

[FifisMom]

Im sure that feeding has also become a prop, especially in the second half of the night, as normally she only feeds for 5 min. Im sure she could do without (she used to only feed once per night since she was 6 weeks old), but now if I just give her the paci, she falls asleep, but is waking up every 45 minutes afterwards until I feed her... 

[FifisMom]

Also, another thing that I forgot to mention is that since +/- 2 weeks she is all the time chewing on her hands, more or less continuously all day long.
I am wondering whether this means that her teeth may have started to move inside of her gums, and maybe that is what causes NW's? Another theory would be that she is really addicted to paci and since she doesnt get it while she is awake, she is trying to substitute it by her hands....?

[Violet's mom]

Hugs.  Just went through all of this.  Go with your instincts- from what I read there's a good chance you will be playing the paci game until she can get it herself - I couldn't function that way but I know some people who did.  It will take a few days but I am glad I got rid of the paci because she sleeps more soundly during the night and only wakes twice now.  We are currently working on getting her to skip her 1am wake up.  It's taken a couple of weeks but I bought a zipadee zip (full body sleep sack) because I wanted her to be able to get to her hands (she would also suck on her hands during the day but it took a while for her to realize she could suck on them at night too - she loves to suck on the material of her zipadee now) and she was rolling.

If she is happy when she wakes up mid-nap, leave her there for 20+ mins to see if she falls back asleep.  I just went through all of this and she was so excited/distracted by me that she stopped going back to sleep so I had to let her play with her hands or stare at her mobile until she fell back asleep.  Some people are really successful with shh/pat and pu/pd but I wasn't.

Hang in there!  You will get through all of this 

[PaulsMom]

She definitely needs her paci to fall asleep, even if it is in a car or in a stroller. It certainly has become a prop  but Im so afraid to get rid of it. She already has troubles falling asleep, I dont imagine how we would do it without a paci! Do you have any suggestions on how to get rid of it in a "peaceful" way? :-)

I know how you feel.  I felt that way with my DS.  He was a paci addict and needed them to fall asleep.  I weaned him cold turkey but in preparation for this I introduced lovies.  So when I put him in his crib, I made sure that he had his lovies (one on each side of him) and stood there and shh-ed him.  It was a few rough nights but it definitely improved his sleep.  Shortly after weaning the paci's he was STTN!

WRT short naps... yes, these can be developmental.  I wasn't very good at extending naps and I certainly APOP'd a large number of naps with my DD.  I agree with pp, and try to extend for around 20 min but if she doesn't sleep, then get her up and try to get her to have a longer nap the next time (this is when I would usually APOP a nap so that she would have at least one long nap).

but now if I just give her the paci, she falls asleep, but is waking up every 45 minutes afterwards until I feed her

Hmm.. not sure, I figure if she keeps on waking until you feed her, and then sleeps for a longer stretch, I would think that she's hungry.  But you know your LO best.

WRT teething - this def factors in around this age.  even if you don't see bumps, it doesn't mean that they aren't feeling the teeth moving around. 

[ZacsMumme]

Hun do ou see any signs of discomfort? - I personally think waking that frequently is often related to pain. Yes the paci causes NW for replugging, but IMO not every 45 min all night long.

I'm not saying there is an issue, just wanting to make sure there isn't
Reflux 101 - General reflux information
Does my LO have food intolerances?

[FifisMom]

Thank you so much for all the answers!
So last 3 nights have been a definite improvement. She wakes up around 1am now, I feed her immediately (full feed) and she sleeps till 6 am, then I feed her for 5 min and then make a very quick breast-to-paci switch and she just sucks on the paci and falls asleep. And she has slept until 8 am these past 3 days, so I am very happy with that. I have tried one night to just shush/pat her to sleep at 1am to get her to sleep a bit more before the feed but she kept waking up every 45 min until I fed her, so I am pretty sure that 1am wake up is due to hunger.
Now, 6am wake-up is probably a habitual waking. But i am afraid that if I dont give her this little snack, she will be up for the day, and I am just not ready start my day at 6am... Do you have any suggestions on this?

Also, when I feed her at 1am, I make sure to keep her for 20-30 min on the breast, like this she is nice and sleepy so when I put her back to bed, she sleeps without the paci. I think this has improved the wakings in between this feed and 6am. I am also trying to introduce the lovies, she has 3 but seems to be interested in 1 only, but it is going in a good direction. I also got her a new type of paci, the kind that doesnt have upward-side and downward-side but is the same from each side, hopefully she will learn to re-plug it herself soon. If these things dont work, I will try to get rid of the paci, but I am just so afraid to do that for the moment! I need to stock up on some sleep first :-)

[FifisMom]

Hun do ou see any signs of discomfort? - I personally think waking that frequently is often related to pain

Yes indeed, she has reflux, she has been on homeopatic meds since 2 weeks old and they have really improved her condition A LOT. Now, she still has regurgitates sometimes and I can see that sometimes she has some pain, but it is pretty rare, and I dont really want to give her "real" meds or anything stronger as long as 95% of the time she is ok. I also follow an alcaline diet, to make sure that my milk is not to acidic.
I also suspect that she might be intolerant to cow's milk protein, as I have noticed that any time I had any (very few times, more by accident, as I myself am lactose intolerant) she would have stronger reflux and more pain.
Thanks a lot for the links, I will take a look in more detail at the one about food intolerances...