Action Plan Help! For 4mo habitual night wakings & CNs

[BusterB]

I have just been reading so many helpful posts on the subject of habitual wakings and think that am starting to understand what needs to be done, but I would be very grateful for any input based on our situation. I have come to the resolution that the night wakings that I had down to 3 month growth spurt/development are actually now, at 4 months, habitual night wakings and I am hoping to come up with an action plan to stop them! Any advice would be greatly received.

For a little background - my little boy is 4 months old today & at approx 10 weeks he seemed to have a leap in development and was able to STTN (between 5-11.5 hour stretches) and if he did wake, he would feed and go straight back to sleep.

He goes down for the night independently, in a co-sleeper cot, with minimal fuss after his bedtime routine (bath, massage, PJs, sleep sack & BF) with a lovie and white noise. So far, I have always fed him when he wakes in the night as his wake pattern seemed to fit with hunger and obviously as he was doing such long stretches and was falling back to sleep, I had no issues.

At the same time he STTN, he dropped all day sleep all of a sudden - we had 2 days, at 10 weeks, where he didn't sleep at all and so I armed myself with BW & No Cry Nap solutions books, a black out blind & as much info as I could get on the internet and we really focused on naps. So I had a very OT little boy on my hands, who although is 'textbook' in most things, where sleep is concerned is very easily overstimulated.

I soon realised that although he is able to fall asleep by himself if you catch him at the right point, or with up to 20 mins fussing if not, he is a chronic cat-napper (30-45 mins tops in the crib) and he is impossible to resettle, once awake. We therefore do re-sets now and I wait for the next set of sleepy cues. He used to wake up screaming from catnaps, but these days is fairly content on waking.

I am very strict about his morning nap being in the crib, even though I know he will only sleep 30 mins - as I believe this is a developmental thing and one day he will shock me with a nice long nap! All other naps are AP, as I make sure he gets a minimum of 3 hours sleep and if I didn't do this not only would he not hit this target but he wouldn't get anything over 45 mins in one stretch, so wouldn't get any restorative sleep. In the car-seat or walking in the sling he can generally sleep anything up to 3 hours - but often a minimum of 1.5 hours no probs. However at one point a couple of weeks ago, during GS fussiness, I was spending 3-4 hours a day walking with him and not only is this killing my back but I just can't maintain that sort of activity on such disturbed night sleep, it's starting to get to me 

With such a short napper I haven't been able to follow 3 hour EASY very easily where the sleep bits were concerned but eating (exclusively BF, both sides at each feed) and activity times (1.5hr) basically followed the 3 hour pattern.

I am now transitioning him to 3.5 hour EASY as this week his A time has jumped to 1.75hr and he was taking less at feeds, so is definitely able to go longer until he is really hungry/

On Mon this week he also learned to roll over & he's also starting to teethe - more things that I was putting the night wakings down to, but it really dawned on me whilst feeding him last night that he is not hungry for at least 2 of the night wakings and I need to help us both get a bit more sleep as the disturbance can't be good for him and as I said it is also taking its toll on me now (especially my nipples, which are no longer getting much respite and are pretty raw now, as he has a shallow latch - but that is a separate issue!)

I didn't think he has issues with nipple dependency as I always put him down awake at night after feeding and until this week I haven't been able to feed him to sleep for naps, even if I wanted to - but with the night wakings it does seem that he wants boob - but then I have never tried NOT feeding him so I don't know 100%?!

One slight problem we have and one of the reasons that I have always fed him when he wakes in night, is that we have a neighbour at very close proximity (we are in a flat) and I really can't have him wailing at night. I do leave him to fuss for up to 10 mins once awake, just in case he goes back to sleep, but this has only happened twice.

Obviously I realise something is going to have to give to fix this though and I may have to speak to my neighbour if we are going to have to let him cry    My husband and I have decided that we're going to try and tackle it this weekend and my husband will do the settling on the wakings where we do not believe he is hungry - but I guess I am nervous about misjudging this. Is there any real way to discern hunger at night? If anyone has advice on how we tackle this, or can advise if we can do this without much crying, or how long it is likely to last i'd be very grateful indeed.

Here are the last couple of days routine - however every day is so different at the moment;

Tues      
Awake @    6:30   
E   6:50 for 10 m   
A   1hr 50   
S   8:25 - 9am (35 mins in crib)
      
E   9:45 for 10 m   
A   1hr 45   
S   10:45 - 11:25am (45 mins cant remember if crib or sling?)
      
E   12:50 for 32 m   
A   X none as fed to sleep and I had to go out so transferred to carseat   
S   1:20pm (1hr 55 in carseat)
      
E   3:35pm for 35 m   
A   1hr 55   
S   5pm    CN (15m in crib - woke up very cranky so initiated earlier BT routine @ 5:45)
      
BT E    6:12pm   
BT S   6:35pm   (put down awake settled after 5 mins fussing)
      
NW   10:45pm   22m
        2:15am   18m
        4:10am   12m (one side only)

Weds      
Awake    6:10am   
E   6:25 for 22m   
A   1hr 50   
S   8 - 8:30am (30 mins in crib)
      
E   9:10am for 6m   
A   tried to follow cues and put him down at approx 10:15am, but crying escalated to inconsolable so we reset
S   11:30am - 12:15pm   (45 mins in sling)
   
E   12:25pm for 20m   
A   1hr 15m   
S   1:30 - 4:10pm   (Long AP nap in the car as had lots of errands to do)
      
E   4:10pm for 13 m   
A   1hr 15m   
S   5:25pm (CN 25 mins in sling)

BT routine @ 6:15pm      
BT   7:15 pm   put down awake, self settled with no (audible) fussing
      
NW   10:10pm   15m
   12:30am   15m
   2:45am   9m (one side only & fell asleep)
   4:40am   15m (one side fell asleep put in crib - instantly woke up crying. Left for 10 mins but then gave other side and he fell asleep in 3 mins on boob and transferred no probs)
      
Thurs      
Awake   6:35am   
A   refused feed at 7am   
E   8am   Fell asleep (sods law was correct sleep time!) - woke up when transitioned to crib, left to resettle for 20 mins until crying escalated. Turns out he had a dirty nappy and was then wide awake!
A   Was a happy chap but definitely more subdued than normal   - watched sleep cues very carefully
S   10:15 - 10:45am (30 mins in pram out walking)
      
E   11:30am for 12 mins   
A      
S   12:15pm   (40 mins in carseat)

... so that is where we are now... he is massively behind on his sleep for today and giving so many sleepy cues (eye rubbing etc) but otherwise WIDE awake and I'm dreading having to walk with him for at least 2 hours this afternoon, followed by him waking up so much in the night....

Has anyone else successfully stopped habitual wakings in their tracks? Would love to hear a success story. Sorry this has turned out to be such a long post, I just tried to include everything from the 'please read before posting' section!

Thanks in advance!

[Layla]

Hi there and welcome

Firstly, hugs for the night wakings. There is a big growth spurt and sleep regression at 4 months but if you think he's waking out of habit rather than hunger, then resettling without feeding would be the key. It's good to have your DH on board and you might find your DS won't fight as much because he won't expect to be fed by him. The key is to be consistent with how you handle the night wakings. How does he fall asleep for his morning nap? Do you have to shh/pat? I would use the same soothing method (shh/pat) at night.

When I started sleep training dd3, I started off concentrating on 1-2 naps in the cot (she was around 6-8 weeks) but by 4 months, I tried to make sure her morning and afternoon nap was in the cot and the last nap (catnap) was the only exception/in a sling. I would work on him taking his first 2 naps in the cot and start working on extending at least 1 of those naps. Waking up happy from a nap could be an indication of not enough A time - you mentioned his A time is around 1.5hrs... we were up to 2hrs by 4 months. I used to leave my dd in the cot up to an hour from when the nap started and she would sometimes put herself back to sleep. So if her nap was only 30mins, I would let her be for another 30mins. If she started crying and it wasn't a mantra but one of those "I need you" cries, I would go to her and try to resettle (which worked 50/50). Her next A was about 15mins less if she had a short nap. If you can try and avoid car rides, that would be bring more consistency to his day and he may start napping a little longer. I never minded AP'g the last nap because that is the first nap to go anyway. I did AP all naps with dd2 until 4 months and she was a chronic catnapper but things got better when I sleep trained her at 4 months.

I think transitioning to 3.5hr EASY will be good because his feeds will be more spaced out and he'll take more in (by the way, we didn't make it to 4hr feeds until close to 5 months as mine is also breastfed and wouldn't have gone 4hrs between feeds at 4 months).

hth a little and let me know how you go/what you think

[BusterB]

Hi Layla - thanks so much for the welcome & for coming back to me, I really appreciate your input.

Last night was pretty much exactly the same NW pattern as previous nights - 11pm, 2am, 4:30am, 6:30am... do you think they would be that consistent if it were hunger?

I had considered a growth spurt as being a reason for the sudden increase in NW but this has been going on since week 13 (so I had it down as 3 month GS to start with) but I thought that disturbed nights due to GS would only last 2/3 nights - so as this has now lasted almost 4 weeks, I don't think that the last week in particular, could be that?

He has also just started having explosive green poos for the first time ever - which I think does mean he is eating too little, too often and only getting foremilk? So I definitely don't think he is hungry enough for it to be a GS at the moment?

I'm interested that you sleep trained your DD at 4 months - did you wait for the GS to finish or do you think we could start it now? My DH wondered if there is any point starting trying to 'fix' this if our little boy is about to need to eat more at night due to 4 month GS? I would hate to start stopping feeding him when he actually really needs it!

As for naps - when I first addressed the day sleep issue from week 10 onwards, I initially made sure all naps were in the crib, exactly as you suggest - which was unfortunately a disaster for us! As he only ever sleeps 30-40m in the crib and resettling is 100% impossible (believe me I have spent HOURS trying and it hasn't worked once in almost 7 weeks!!) it meant he was only getting 2 hours total of catnaps a day (nothing restorative) and evenings were a meltdown, we were all pretty miserable.

In the end we were so behind on sleep and in a vicious OT cycle, that I decided the best thing to do was only ensure only 1st nap was in crib until he has developed enough to sleep more than one sleep cycle. That way I still have enough naps left in the day that I can AP and ensure a total of 3-5 hours day sleep, which means I have a totally different baby by the end of the day! I honestly feel that this is the best for my little boy and I live in great hope of the day he sleeps more that 30-40 in the crib and then I will definitely transition him there for at least 2 naps a day, as I understand that is the best place for him to sleep.

Until i can work out if doing any sleep training prior to a big growth spurt is worth it or the right thing to do, i think i will just have to carry on as we are - so any thoughts on that would be great!

[Layla]

Yeah, the explosive green poos sound like too much foremilk - I would really work on stretching out his feeds so that he takes in a full feed.

I sleep trained with shh/pat. Dd1 was only 13 months old when dd2 was born so I had no energy to sleep train until things settled a bit. Dd2 was also a very fussy baby/had extreme colic and pretty much screamed for the first 4 months of her life so it was really all about AP to help us survive but then I realised she was getting chronically overtired and I was up every 2 hrs with her, BF or replugging the paci, so I had enough and dedicated 2 full weeks to shh/pat in the cot for ALL naps and she went from being dependent on paci (which I threw out so not to be tempted)/rocking/being BF/car/pram rides to sleeping in the cot. It was such a relief and her nights got better first before naps improved! We still did struggle with short naps (I think short naps are developmental for some) but I didn't care because she knew how to put herself to sleep so I just rode out the short nap phase, which she grew out of. I used to give myself up to 20-30mins with shh/pat in the cot and if there was no S, I would take her out of the cot (change of scenery) and try again a little later. If E was due, I would do E and then try S. If she was falling asleep by the breast, I would try and keep her up and finish E as much as possible or end the feed and into the cot for S. If she had a short nap and woke up crying, I would try and resettle with shh/pat up to an hour from when she'd go down for a nap. If no S by the time hour was up, I would get her out and move on with our day and offer the next nap a little earlier (15mins earlier). If she was just quiet after a short nap, I would leave her in the cot and I mentioned earlier sometimes she would put herself back to sleep.

However I understand what you mean about them getting overtired by the end of the day. On crappy nap days, I would put her to bed very early (as early as 5.30pm) to help her catch up on sleep at night, which she was good at doing (some babies don't tack on but all of mine did/have)

Until i can work out if doing any sleep training prior to a big growth spurt is worth it or the right thing to do, i think i will just have to carry on as we are - so any thoughts on that would be great!

Yes, its important to start sleep training when you're ready and committed because there will possibly be lots of crying and it will take a toll on you but it's not fair to give up and go back to what you were doing before as all the crying will be for nothing. Some mums also start off naps in the cot and if short nap, they AP the rest of the nap.

Only you know if he's genuinely hungry or not. If he is taking in a full feed and not just falling asleep as soon as he's on the breast, he probably is hungry. You would try waiting a few more weeks but it would help if you space out his daytime feeds too. Also by 4 months (with dd3), our feeds were 5mins per breast (she became a lot more efficient) and what I used to do was end the feed as soon as the suckling slowed right down and then move onto the next side. Sometime around 5months though I started doing one side only per feed (at night) to help her take more in during the day.

[Maidentinuviel]

Hi BusterB,
If you have a moment, can you update me on how your son is doing? My daughter is 4 months and we are dealing with EXACTLY the same issues that you had in this post. Did anything work for you, or did you just have to ride it out? TIA