I'm exhausted. My DD has been doing 4am-5:30 am early wakings for so long that I'm officially out of ideas, maybe a month maybe longer. She was doing great and sleeping through the night at 5 months. But everything I've tried doesn't seem to work. Here is her current EASY in which we strive for everyday:
E 6:30 Wake up and bottle
A for roughly 3 hours. Solids at 8:00 or 8:30 lately to help with nap.
S 9:15am. Start Wind down. 9:30 she's asleep. Will sleep anywhere from 1 hour 10 mins to 2 hours. Longer naps have been typical for past few days.
E 11:00 bottle or earlier if she woke up sooner.
A 3 hours. Solids at 12:30pm
S at 1:45-2pm depending on when she woke
E at 3:15/3:30pm bottle whenever she wakes. Solids at 5:30pm
E at 6:30 Bottle
S 6:30 or 7:00 bedtime. However, it can take her anywhere from 10 mins-30 to fall asleep. OT? Problem is she has only slept over 11 hours once in her life. Before all this, I used to get the consistent 11 hours no matter what time I put her down even though this wasn't always straight through.
EW 4am-5:30am Consistent early wakings. I go in if she's crying, put paci in and tell her to go back to sleep. No touching. She typically lays there for 30-1 hour until I get her at 6:30. If she wakes up earlier, she'll go back to sleep within 30mins-1hour. Back at 5 month I'd let her sleep until she was ready to get up anywhere from 6-7:30. Now we're enforcing 6:30 cause of the early wakings. I really try not to feed her if EW happen. Although sometimes I'm just over it. The feeding will always put her right back to sleep if its enough. But I don't think she needs it, she just uses it to put herself back to sleep.
Nap Routine: read a book, put on sleep sack, we sing and sway while we turn lights off and sound machine on, i kiss her and say have a good nappy nap. I put her in her Rock n Play (reflux baby), with paci and lovie. Then I can sit out of sight until she talks or lightly fusses herself to sleep. Typically pop paci in about 1 time before she falls asleep. Bed time routine is the same except we eat in her room, and we have a bath before all of it.
Formula fed: gets 4 bottles about 30-32 oz a day plus 3 times a day solids.
At 6ish months she had an activity time of 2 hours and 15 mins if i was lucky. Then I started getting 30, 45 and 1 hour 10 min naps on a consistent basis. I figured this might mean she needed an activity increase, especially since she was behind the recommended amount. So I spent two weeks bumping her up form 2 hours to 3 hours activity time (which also included the 3 nap to 2 nap transition. She couldn't go to sleep at night even when her last nap was capped at 20 mins. So thats what made me think I should get rid of the 3rd one). Yet, every time I changed her activity time, I'd still get 45-1 hour and 10 min naps. So I increased it the A time to 3hrs and now I typically get 1 hour 30-2 hour naps. Good thing right? Well by the 2 hour mark on her 2nd activity time of the day she is already yawning. Does this mean I've stretched her too far? She basically goes down for nap anytime I put her down, so I can't judge it off her sleepy cues or how badly she fights it. And she gets cranky during A time around the 2 hour mark but if I change stations she is okay.
None of these changes have affected her early wakings. We thought maybe it was getting rid of the dreamfeed (even though she was doing them before we stopped the dream feed) but it hasn't affected the ew. Not to mention she is eating 30-32 oz of formula a day with solid foods on top of that. With dreamfeed she was eating way too much during the day in formula. Since I've scaled back the formula, she's been eating solids better. Never seems excessively hungry though. I don't think its a feeding issue but could be wrong?
For a week it was teething, but it hasn't been the issue lately. Same with shots from last week. She is a reflux baby, but her meds are golden! I know the difference between when they work for her and when they don't cause we struggled with finding a med that worked for so long. I know its not reflux issues. I'm being very careful to avoid food allergies.
She might have a pacifier prop issue? But she can almost put it in her mouth the correct way by herself. I know Tracy doesn't support it at her age, but we became hooked on many AP issues with the reflux. It was the one thing that soothed her and I didn't have to strength to battle another AP thing. Would this be the cause of all the early wakings?
I think I've covered just about everything. ANY INSIGHT YOU CAN GIVE ME WILL HELP! I'm officially exhausted and out of ideas. I do school work online until 12am. Then she has me up at 4 or 5am in which I cannot go back to sleep. Am I expecting too much out of her or am I screwing up somewhere and don't know it?!
Also wanted to add that before we started stretching her A time, early wakings were 1.5 hours-2 hours long and started about 3:30. We've made some improvement there so thats a positive.
