Baby used to STTN, now she's up for hours each night - please help!!

[Ejb82]

would love some advice to help with my daughters overnight sleeping. She has just turned 6 months old and from 10 days old until she was 4 months she slept right through the night, in the beginning for 8 hours and by 4 months she tended to sleep 8pm to 8am. She used to really tank up spending 5pm to 8pm doing a lot of feeding. I know this is unusual and honestly I'd be happy now with just one or two wakes in the night! Over this period she didn't sleep much at all during the day, maybe an hour tops, and because she slept so well at night and didn't display any tired cues I have to say that we didn't even think about putting her on any kind of routine.

At 4 months this all stopped! She has started to wake multiple times during the night so I've been much more disciplined about her daily routine although I know it doesn't follow EASY to the letter. I think because she doesn't sleep at night she's having more naps now, a typical day now (and for last 5 weeks) is:

7am breastfeed
8am solids
9.30am breastfeed
9.45am naps for about 45 minutes
12.30pm breastfeed then solids for lunch
1.30pm naps for about 90 minutes
Occasionally, if the night before has been really bad she has another 45 minute nap in the afternoon.
4.30ish breastfeed then solids for tea
6.45pm bath, book, breastfeed, bed and is asleep by 7.30pm.  She is ready for bed then but doesn't seem overtired.

She tends to feed for 15 - 20 min at a time and both sides, occasionally will have another one or two 5 minute feeds during the day which might be me thinking she's hungry rather than her needing it.

We now use PU/PD (started 5 weeks ago) and that works brilliantly all through the day for naps and for bedtime. Occasionally takes 15min and 3 or 4 pick ups but usually much quicker now.

She has started to wake ALOT! So usually about 11.30pm then 3am and after that she's often waking every 30 minutes or so but sometimes will be awake for two hours in the middle of the night. She is often wide awake wanting to play, we leave her but she never goes back to sleep herself, it always turns into fussing and then proper crying and then what seems like endless pick up / put down which can go on for over an hour and she can get quite hysterical, the second you pick her up she stops and the second you put her down she starts screaming with full tears, the works!

I try not to feed her until after 2am and only twice a night. She does eat properly but because she wakes up playing I don't think it's hunger that's waking her up. Also I often can't get her to feed at 7am as she's replacing her morning feed with the night ones rather than adding in an extra one.

A lot is happening for her at once as she's very physically active at quite a young age, at 4 months she was rolling then sitting and now she is crawling although she's still perfecting that skill, and she is starting to pull herself up to standing on things. She's also teething and in the last week has one of her bottom teeth has cut through.  Plus we started weaning at 5 1/2 months and she's now just moved onto 3 meals a day.  During the day she is really happy and it's very rare for her to cry.

She does has a lovie but to be honest she's not that interested in it, we introduced it as part of the bedtime routine but she mostly ignores it!  At the moment her cot is in our room but we're thinking of moving it to her nursery.

I'm wondering a few things:

- I know 'sleep breeds sleep' but I do wonder if she needs less sleep than the average baby and by napping during the day she's turning waking up at night into a real habit

- I seem to be feeding her more than every 4 hours, even though she's now moving on to solids. She's always been on the small side, she consistently tracks on the 9th percentile, down from her birth weight at 25th, health visitors are happy with this as she's so active). I can't help wonder if either I'm desperately trying to get her to feed too often leading to her snacking OR is she actually not getting enough and do I need to switch to formula (which I'm reluctant to do).

- any other tips to help with all the waking would be greatly appreciated!

[gb18]

Hi. I know this is of no help but my lo sounds very much like yours!! Although my lo has never sttn, he has occasionally recently but mixes this with nights like your lo. The hours of being awake are horrendous aren't they!!
I have found that my lo seems to need a bit less sleep than average to sttn. Everything I have read says keep an eye on babies mood as an indicator and my lo like yours is always happy.
Is your baby worse when he has 3 naps? Maybe u could look at transitioning to 2 naps consistently to see if that helps?
Do u think the extra feeds r a comfort thing? I have stopped night feeds as my lo was not feeding as well in the mornings and this seemed to help reduce the nw to one episode.

I look forward to seeing other peoples responses

[Ejb82]

I know, I'm turning into a zombie! Number of naps haven't made such a difference but actually when I think about it, when she has three naps they are all about 45minutes rather than one that length and one 90min so she's having the same amount whether she has two or three naps!

Thanks for the advice on the night feeds, will give that a go tonight as I do think it could be comfort, sometimes she eats properly and sometimes I feel like a human pacifier! Will try tonight to start getting rid of them, won't feed her tonight until 4am and see how that goes...  Good luck with your night!

[Layla]

Hi there,

A couple of things stand out in your post... I think she's a little overtired, given that she only has 2 sleeps a day and one of them is short (45mins) and she's then awake for 4.5hrs before bedtime. I would try and aim for 2x1.5hr naps and would look at putting her to bed earlier for the night. At 6 months, a lot of babies start to drop their catnap and are averaging 3hrs A time during the day. Our routine was something like this:

6am - wake and feed (both sides of 1 side if she had an early morning/night feed)
7ish - some solids (1-2 tablespoons)
9-10.30 - morning nap
wake and E (both sides)
1.30-3 - afternoon nap
wake and E (both sides)
5pm - E (one side)
bath and bedtime routine
6pm - final E and bedtime
Night feed (1-2 or sometimes slept right through)

Does she know how to go to sleep independently? When she wakes 45mins into her morning nap, is she crying or is she playing? Could you leave her there for another 15mins to see if she will go back to sleep (if she's quiet or mantra crying)?

The other thing that concerns me is 3meals a day. Milk is still meant to be the primary source of food and we didn't move onto 3 meals until mine was 9mo (will all 3 of mine). At 6 months, we were only having 1-2 tablespoons at breakfast and milk for the rest of the day. It is possible the solids are causing her discomfort too and I would cut it right back to just 1 meal a day so that she takes more milk.

What do you think?

[Ejb82]

Hi Layla,

Thanks for your reply. On the solids I should explain they really aren't proper meals, she's having an ice cubes worth of purée at each sitting minus what goes on bib / hands and sometimes a small bit of rice cake later in the day. It's interesting that you've said it could be too much at this age because the health visitor seems to be saying the opposite, I think that's because she's so small for her age and they think she needs feeding up whereas I think she's so active she's working off a lot of calories! So I'm resisting giving her any more. I'll definitely think further about the amount we're feeding her though, although her sleep issues started at 4 months before she was on any solids and haven't changed since we've introduced them so I don't think that's a particular cause of the night wakings.

Instinctively I'd thought that she needed less sleep but as those instincts aren't getting us much sleep I'll definitely try to extend both naps. You're right to suggest that she isn't self settling during the day as to get her to sleep 90 minutes in the afternoon I have to resettle her after about 40 min.  I will try to leave her to do this herself, if she's in the cot she does wake crying so I probably jump in too quick rather than seeing if she'll go back down herself.

I'll also pull bedtime forward by 30 min tonight as a starting point.

Thanks so much for your help.

[gb18]

Hi. How r u getting on?

[Ejb82]

Hi there.  Not great unfortunately!! Things have changed though as now she wakes about 2am, takes 30min to get her back to sleep and then on a good night she sleeps through to about 6am, on a bad night she wakes again at 4am and then 6am.  I've been struggling to get her to sleep for 2 x 90 minutes during the day and I have tried every day since writing the post. It's pretty easy to get a 90min to 2hr nap in the morning but in the afternoon even with lightly waking her just before the end of her sleep cycle I can't get her to sleep for longer...with the exception of today actually, so fingers crossed tonight will be a bit different!  Since my first post we've had two teeth come through and a week of an awful cold with stuffed up nose which I think affected her sleep a lot so now that's just over I'm hoping things will improve.

Although she's not particularly hungry overnight (and I don't feed her unless its 4am or after), I'm going to start trying a dream feed at about 11.

Any other suggestions gratefully received!

[gb18]

Did u have any luck? Have you try always capping the morning nap to 1.5 hrs to give u a better chance of a longer pm nap? I know it is super hard to wake them as u just want them to sleep but might make pm nap longer. What A time do u do before pm nap?

Although it sounds rough still there is definitely positive progress and if it is any help my lo just suddenly sttn even after regular waking. Don't get me wrong he does not consistently do it but I know he can.

Xx

[Ejb82]

No it wasn't great, awake at 2 for 45min and then from 4 onwards she only really napped for very short periods. PU/PD actually got her more agitated so was doing a lot of shush pat.  However she didn't really eat much for the dream feed as she kept nodding off so I might try her with a bottle tonight instead of bf and see if that helps. Good point on the morning nap, I will cap today's at 90min and see if I can then extend her afternoon one. I do feel like even though she's not having her nap until 9 or 9.30, because she's so tired from overnight it's more catching up on sleep she's missed.

Her afternoon nap is now just before 3pm so A time beforehand is about 3 1/2 to 4 hours.  She is so active, crawling all over the place and she's just started sofa surfing too, so I wouldn't be surprised if OT is still an issue.

Thanks for the support!

[gb18]

I know what u mean. My lo was up for hour and half last night ( I think due to us having been away from home for 4 days) and I wonder if ot just builds over the days as total sleep each day is low. I would be interested to know what peoples solutions r to this.

If I let lo sleep longer in the day then our nights r bad so I never want to let him have more to catch up. Would rather he just used the night to catch up!!! Wishful thinking at times xx