We have a touchy/spirited 4 month old girl who wakes frequently at night. We've used swaddle/white noise and pacifier since early on. We're trying the easy method to try to get longer stretches at night. We're currently getting 2-3 hours. She's not really a cuddly baby, doesn't like to be in the cradle held position and picking her up doesn't stop her crying in the night (it does during the day when she's upset). Bouncing her usually calms her but we're using the shush pat method now. Shush/pat seems to work well for naptime but its much harder at night. I try for 30-40 min then feed. I think she might have a food prop at night. I'm not sure how to break that habit. I was feeding her on demand, but am now stretching her daytime feeds to 3.5 hours in between. Now I'm worried that she might not get enough calories in the day and will want even more at night.
We're on day 2 of the easy method. It's been really hard, our EASY yesterday was like this...
7am wake
7:10 E
7:20 A
8:10 wind down and Sleep by 8:20
10:20 wake
10:30 E
10:40 A
12:00 S (I use shush/pat to stretch the nap to 1.5 hours because she always wakes at 45 min)
1:45 E
2:00 A
3:20 S (have to use shush/pat to get past 30 min to stretch the nap)
5:20 E
5:30 A
Bedtime routine starts at 6:30, massage/bath/story and expressed milk (usually 4 ounces). She's swaddled half way through her feed. She usually falls asleep after the feed (7pm) but she is burped until she wakes slightly before putting her down (w2s)
Then our night time is really hard. She wakes every 2 to 3 hours. She woke at 9pm and we tried shush pat for 40 min then fed her. We try dream feeding her at 11pm. But she still wakes at 1am. I'm using shush/pat to try to get her back to sleep, but usually I'm just prolonging her sleep until the next feed because the minute I stop she wakes. I usually last about 30-40 mins of shush patting before I just feed her. The shush patting seems to work better for us in the day.
Shush patting does seem to immediately calm her, but at night, the second I stop - she wakes. I can't seem to get her to transition to her next sleep cycle. Maybe I have to shush pat for an hour or more? Although my arm starts to get numb, I'm not sure how I can do that. I know we're only just starting so we're keeping at it trying to lengthen her Activity time without her getting OT. Just wanted to make sure we're not doing something wrong because daytime seems pretty good with this method but night is a bit worse (we used to get one 4 hour sleep).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
