5 month old 2 hourly night wakings... Advice please!

[ladyboz]

Hi ladies!
I have a 5 month 2 week old baby girl. She's a very easy going baby. However the past few weeks have been a little off kilter. She needed more awake time during the day as her naps were shortening. Once we adjusted her awake times, her naps improved greatly! However, for the past week she's been having odd night wakings. I think this might partly be because of teething. We try and keep her as comfortable as possible, however sometimes she can't be soothed by being held. Even a pacifier bothers her. I found that placing her in her swing helps (sometimes!). Anyway, it's going on night 7 and she's been waking every 2-3 hours crying. I stick to only feeding her every 4 hours so at 12 mid and 3:30ish and the other wakings my husband does the pu/pd or the swing. Here's how our routine looks like:

6:00-6:30 awake/eat
9:00 nap/eat (or earlier if she wakes at 6, we don't keep her up past 2 hours and 30 mins)
11:00 up/eat (she's been napping great!)
1:30 nap/eat
3:30 up/eat
5:00 cluster feed
5:30 bath/bedtime routine
6:00 top off
6:15 asleep
 here's where it starts to get crazy...
9:30 awake crying, pacify, pu/pd
10:30: same
11:30-12:00 eat and goes right to sleep
3:00 awake crying/eat and goes to sleep
4:30 cry, pu/pd, pacify, swing
5:30 same

Any ladies out there with advice? I've been putting her down early as she had been refusing her catnap. The days go by so well and she's very happy and is napping well. Even our bedtime routine goes smoothly. It just goes all out the window after 9:00 when she starts waking. I'm running on such little sleep, that it's taking a toll on me. I'm sure it is on baby girl too... To rule out teething, we've gotten her an amber teething necklace and anklet, we use orajel during the night. She hasn't been running a fever so we try not to give her pediacare.

[PaulsMom]

Hi there!

Hugs for the nw's.  I tend to think that the frequency of nw's may be due to discomfort of some kind.  At this age, teething and tummy issues tend to be the main culprits.  Have you started her on any solid foods yet?  Does she have any constipation? 

Wrt teething, not all babies will run a fever but she will still be in pain.  If you feel comfortable, you might want to give her one dose of acetominophen to see if it makes a difference.  You can talk to your dr about giving it to her but as long as you stay within the dosing guidelines, it's usually considered to be relatively safe med to give. 

HTH

[ladyboz]

Thanks so much for the reply!
Last week I'm pretty sure she was teething. No teeth popped out, but she seems to be doing better. I got her an amber teething necklace and have been using some hylands teething products. I think the past few nights we've been fighting a habit of nursing her to sleep, which I had been doing when she was teething last week. Last night went a little better. She went to sleep at 7pm She woke up once at 10:30  and my husband did the pu/pd. She went to sleep by 11:00. She woke up at 1:20 to nurse and went right back to sleep. But, she woke up fully at 5:45 playing. There was no getting her back to sleep. I'm wondering how this is going to affect her day. She has been refusing her catnap and I've been putting her to bed accordingly to her last nap. So if she wakes up from her nap at 3, I'll put her down for the night at 6ish. If I go any later than that, she get's OT and the night wakings are worse. But, if I put her to bed earlier, she does these really early morning wakings. Do you have any advice for helping her to sleep longer during the night? Is there a way that I can push her bedtime back a bit to help, but not make her ot? Agh! lol

Here's what our day looks like today because of the early wake up:

5:45 up/eat
8:15 nap/eat
10:15 up/eat
12:45 nap/eat
2:45 up
3:00 eat when I pick her up (my mom watches her while I'm at work)
This is where it gets tricky...
5:15 catnap?? She's been refusing
5:45 up/eat
7:00 bath/bedtime routine
7:45 in bed?

Any advice would be appreciated! I really don't want another night nw... sigh. I feel like last night we made headway, but now this morning is thrown off and feel like our day might be shot.

[Layla]

Hi there,

I've followed you here from the naps thread so that Paul's mum and I can keep the advice in one post. If you're working on dropping the CN, I would work on adding more A time before her morning and afternoon nap and that way you can push the bedtime. So if she wakes at 6am, aim for something like this:

6am - wake
9-11 - morning nap
2-4 - afternoon nap
7pm - bedtime

Otherwise, if you think she might be struggling with the stretched A times, you could look at keeping her A's at 2.5hrs in between the naps but waking her 1.5hrs into the morning and afternoon nap so that there is enough time for her to take the CN. You might have to AP the catnap - and in a couple of weeks you could try and extend her A's to 3hrs and drop the catnap?

So with a CN and shorter naps day, it would be something like this:
6am - wake
8.30-10 - morning nap
12.30-2pm - afternoon nap
between 4.30-5pm - start CN (let her sleep 30mins)
between 7-7.30pm - bedtime

What do you think?

[ladyboz]

Thanks Layla!

I appreciate all the help!

Yesterday went pretty smooth. We upped her awake time by 15 mins in the morning and she woke once in 30 mins (guessing ot), but went back to sleep and slept for a total of 1.5 hours. Her afternoon nap was the same. Which ended up working out as she took a catnap at 5! Yay! By 6:30 she was ready for bath and was asleep by 7:20. Last night was a dream... she slept all the way through except for her usual wake times to eat (1am and 3:30). I also gave her some gas drops as her tummy was a bit hard and she was gassy. It's 6:24 and she's still asleep. Praying today goes smoothly again.

[PaulsMom]

Yay!  Great update!  Fx for a good napping day.

[Layla]

Excellent update