Author Topic: five and a half month old waking before 7am  (Read 2556 times)

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Offline emmdol

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five and a half month old waking before 7am
« on: December 01, 2014, 09:52:52 am »
Hello

I posted on here a while ago and got some helpful replies thank you. But I can't find the thread so I haven't responded again. I do apologise - if I can find the thread I will do so as am very grateful.

So, we started the EASY and PUPD on 2 November when our little girl was about 17 weeks old. We went from nearly 'zero' - ie short naps in the day mainly, feeding to sleep and feeding in night. So she has done really well with the method. But we are still having a couple of issues that I'd really appreciate advice on. Our baby is now 21 and a half weeks old.

So, we did EASY for four month old routine and we haven't got to the four/four/four goal yet. She's doing well extending her activity time in the afternoon but we can't get it to a full two hours without really tipping her over the edge and making the put down traumatic for everyone - so happy to just keep working on that. Hence we are not on a full four hours between feeds - but I'd say we are usually on 3 and a half and sometimes four.

The queries I have are:

daytime naps - she usually (not always) does a good two hours in the first morning nap and we wake her up, or she wakes naturally around the two hour mark. But just recently her midday nap she wakes after 35-45 minutes. I try PUPD to get her back down but it goes on for 40-60 minutes. I know the idea is to persevere but it doesn't seem to be 'training' her into extending the nap - she just wakes after 35-45 minutes the next day. How long would this usually take to see a change? The late afternoon nap can be similar, but not always as bad as the midday one. She will wake, perhaps be resettled by sshhh pat and then wake again 10 minutes later. I am up and down the stairs and she isn't getting very good sleeps. Any advice?

night time sleeping - we tend to put her to bed around 7/7.30 (if she can last that long - see below). We then do a dream feed between 10.30 and 11pm (NB all our feeding is breast feeding). I wouldn't say she was ever fully asleep at the DF but usually she goes back down OK.

Then she will sometimes wake around 3am. Sometimes we can sshh pat back to sleep but sometimes (like Saturday night) she is up and we have to do the full PUPD. On Saturday it took us TWO HOURS of PUPD - from 3am -5am - we were rather demoralised and worried about her - so little sleep and all that crying.

The 3am wake ups are less common though but what she has really got into a habit of doing is waking at 5 or 6am. We don't feed her now (we did used to feed her at 6am) but do PUPD but again this can go on for up to an hour and then she has ten minutes sleep and it is time to get up at 7am.

What should we do for the best? Is baby hungry? Should we be feeding her? We want her to go through to 7am so that the next day is on track (if she gets up at 6 then of course everything is an hour ahead and we are in trouble keeping bed time going until 7pm) but I don't want to starve the poppet.

I am confused by the book in one aspect in that it says baby should sleep through to 7am. But it says somewhere that the dream feed should keep them going until 5 or 6am. Are we supposed to feed then? We haven't been because we thought we were supposed to do PUPD to extend until 7am.

It's just this aspect doesn't seem to be improving even after doing this for a month so we are not sure that the 'training' is working right here and of course I want baby to have enough nourishment.

We haven't got a 'typical' day but an 'average' one might be something like this

05.00 baby wake just mewing to self
not resettle so at 05.30/45 start crying
PUPD until 06.30/45
07.00 wake baby
EAT - ten to fifteen minutes total (both breasts)
ACTIVITY
09.00 SLEEP (can just about manage to get it to 2 hours A without baby getting overtired)
11.00 wake
E (as above)
A
12.30/45 PD for nap (hard to stretch it longer than this)
13.15 might wake - shhpat to get down again sometimes works, or PUPD which then doesn't and we stop when it gets to e.g. 14.00
E 14.00
A
15.30 PD for nap - may go until 16.30/16.45 but may need some shhpat in the middle
16.45/17.00 E
A
just about stretch it to bath at 18.30
E at 19.00 then down
often wakes around 21.30/22.00 and shh pat down
E DF at 22.45
Sometimes wakes around 03.00 - sometimes resettles  self, occasionally needs PUPD and if so it can take an hour or more
OR wakes around 05.00 and as above

Very many thanks would just appreciate some thoughts as its pretty much every night that we have to do some kind of PUPD to get through to 7am and that doesn't seem right?

All the best

x
 





Offline Ima shel Alon

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2014, 14:33:24 pm »
Hi there!

Your questions regarding the second nap and what is happening during the night and the EW have the same answer, at least IMO.
Your baby's A times are very short.
I mean, I understand she doesn't manage to do more than 2h in the morning which is actually ok, but the second A time has to be stretched. There is just no way around it. Once she is on better A times are more age appropriate I believe the second nap and the night will be better.
The only think with the night that I am not sure about is whether there is hunger playing here as well. On one hand if she goes back to sleep at 3 and stays asleep till 6 then maybe she is not hungry, but if it's not the A times that are causing this then it would be hunger. My DS was FF and still needed a DF and another night feed at this age.
If you like you can try and feed once at 3AM and see if she sleeps longer in the morning, though the first thing I'd try to tackle is the stretching of the A times. It really doesn't have to be much, just like 10min to see if there is a change. If there won't be a change after 4 days then you can increase by 10min again and stick with it for 4 days.

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Offline emmdol

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2014, 09:27:40 am »
Thank you very much for your reply. We were working on the four month old 'get back on track' EASY routine. But of course she's five and a half months old now.

Could you send me a typical EASY pattern for a five and a half/ six month old for what they should be able to achieve?

Should they still have the two hour sleep at 9am? That seems quite long. Should  she be having her longest nap in the middle of the day? Am I right in thinking that she should be having between 3 and 4 hours sleep in the day?

I will try to extend the activity times today. It's quite hard if you extend them and then baby gets ON and is hard to put down. And then wakes up more. So any advice on extending them without baby getting upset would be well received.  Thank you.

Re hunger. Last night we did not do the dream feed because we thought we'd see how far she slept . She went to bed about 7pm and slept until 23.45. I BF  her then. After that she didn't cry immediately but I'm not sure how much she slept until 2nd when she woke crying. Before that she was mewing around in her cot, kicking her legs and all sorts for what seemed like two hours (she is currently sleeping in a bedside crib next to us). When she started properly crying at 2am  my partner did a couple of PUPD  and she went to sleep.

She then woke about 5.30 am and I BF her following your advice. I think she must have been hungry as she fed deeply (this makes me really worried that for the past few weeks when we have been not feeding her in EUROPE but doing PUPD for hours that we've been starving her and affecting her development  :( )

But after we fed her at 5.30  she was crying. I think that might have been wind tho'  - should you wind at the EWU feed?

Woke at 7 am. Fed. Activity for 2 hours then she got very upset so I have just put her down.

I'm sorry for all these questions but I feel really confused, and don't want to drift off track.

Very best :)


Offline Bears mum

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2014, 11:17:15 am »
If you read Tracys interviews (perhaps someone could provide the link) she talks very clearly about 45 min naps starting because of too short activity times. She says that baby feels tired so is put down but as she has not really been awake long enough she only needs 45 mins to feel refreshed and then the next sleep time she is no longer under tired but overtired so a vicious circle begins! Seems that extending A times is very good advice. Don't worry about LO being hungry, will not have caused any harm at all, sounds like you are doing a fab job!

Offline soulstar75

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #4 on: December 04, 2014, 01:40:31 am »
I'm in the same boat as you. My little one is at a corrected age of 5.5 months and is exactly like your little one. At this point,  A time of 2 hrs and 15 mins is all he can handle. I did read on another site that naps should total 3 hours max. I don't have additional advice but wanted to let you know that you are not alone. I think I will try extending A time as well which I think will be hard but we will see how it goes.

Offline emmdol

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #5 on: December 04, 2014, 08:05:08 am »
Hello, nice to hear from you and thank you. I extended the awake times a boy yesterday and got to 2 1/2 hours in the afternoon ok. You get so much conflicting advice a out amounts and times of sleep.  I might try the max 3 hours. Although I worry about poor little baby keep having everything changed about.

Does your little one wake at night? I am so confused about the training. On one hand it says don't cave in and feed but on the other hand it says that dream feed might only see them through five or six hours. So what do you do at 4 o'clock in the morning?

For about three weeks we religiously PUPD  when she woke in the early hours not feeding her. But it never got better and was still taking at least an hour sometimes too. I just felt it wasn't right and she must be hungry . Also she hadn't put on much weight over last three weeks so on my instinct and on advice of health  visitor we have fed her last two nights when she wakes in early hours.

Which I feel happier about for baby's health  but worried that we are 'ruining ' any training. How do you get on at night?

Good to share with you. Thank you. Do tell me how you get on. :)

Offline Ima shel Alon

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #6 on: December 04, 2014, 17:56:01 pm »
Could you send me a typical EASY pattern for a five and a half/ six month old for what they should be able to achieve?
This might help: Average A times- BOOKMARK ME!
Sample EASY Routines from 0 - 13mths+
Should they still have the two hour sleep at 9am? That seems quite long. Should  she be having her longest nap in the middle of the day? Am I right in thinking that she should be having between 3 and 4 hours sleep in the day?
She should be doing 2 full naps at this age, each of 1.5-2h and one CN of 45min. 3h total day sleep will not be enough for her, IMO.
I will try to extend the activity times today. It's quite hard if you extend them and then baby gets ON and is hard to put down. And then wakes up more. So any advice on extending them without baby getting upset would be well received. 
Well, yes, extending A times is not easy, but necessary. If you stick with it and increase only 10min every 3-4 days then on the 3rd-4th day baby shouldn't be OT anymore.
She then woke about 5.30 am and I BF her following your advice. I think she must have been hungry as she fed deeply (this makes me really worried that for the past few weeks when we have been not feeding her in EUROPE but doing PUPD for hours that we've been starving her and affecting her development   )

But after we fed her at 5.30  she was crying. I think that might have been wind tho'  - should you wind at the EWU feed?
Don't feel guilty, we are all doing the best we can. I hope that feeding her now would work for you and she will go back to sleep till a reasonable hour.
Yes, I would always burp a baby after a NF, we tried not to and DS had big problems with wind.
Does your little one wake at night? I am so confused about the training. On one hand it says don't cave in and feed but on the other hand it says that dream feed might only see them through five or six hours. So what do you do at 4 o'clock in the morning?
There are a lot of things you shouldn't cave in when you ST, but hunger is not one of them. A hungry baby should always be fed and having 2NF at 5-6m old is totally normal.
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Offline soulstar75

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #7 on: December 05, 2014, 01:30:36 am »
Hi Emmdol,
There's a lot of conflicting advice but I think its best to do what feels right for your baby as you know her best. For instance, my boy has never slept for more than 4 hours during the day but yet he's a fairly happy boy so I assume he's getting enough sleep. I was worried at the beginning cause as an infant he wasn't sleeping near the required time and the doctor said its just his own schedule.

During the night after he goes down, he does a dream feed between 10- 12 and will them wake up again around 2 or 3. At this point, I offer a feed and sometimes he will feed and sometimes he won't and will go back to sleep but I always offer. I think he will wean himself off night feeds at this rate. He will wake up again around 5 to 7am numerous times. Sometimes due to gas but also because he has trouble resettling back to sleep. At this point, i bring him into my bed so I just hold his arms down so he doesn't flail his arms much and wake up fully. This works for us during the being. I'm hoping with age things get better. Hang in there!!

Offline emmdol

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #8 on: December 07, 2014, 10:35:06 am »
Thanks to all for replies.

Ima shel Alon yes I was confused about the night waking because in the book Tracy says the aim is to get them to sleep through the night and that DF  should see them through. And if they wake at the same time every night it is habit not hunger. So that's the only reason we were doing PUPD  instead of feeding.  Because we were giving her a DF and she was waking around 3am every night.

I am distraught to think we were not feeding our hungry baby each of those times and it turns out then that the advice in the book is wrong?

I've been extending the A times and she still wakes up from naps after 35/40 mins.  If it's less than 3 hours since her last feed then we try to extend with PUPD but it is gruelling because it just doesn't seem to improve.

Yesterday the naps went all wrong and she is had 2 X 45 min naps all day. But she was not distraught and we put her to bed at 6.30. She had DF at 11 and then woke at 3 but kept herself amused until 3.40 when I fed her . And then she woke at 6.45 hungry.

So it seems that she is not getting enough food in the day do you think?

Thanks for any advice. Best wishes


Offline MasynSpencerElliotte

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #9 on: December 07, 2014, 16:50:50 pm »
She is ebf right? A lot of what we know about bf has changed since the books were written and as Tracy passed away they have never been updated (as I feel they would have been to reflect new research). Many ebf babies do not make the 4 hr feed times until they older and perhaps not even until they start solids and night feeds may last longer as well. Bm is highly digestible so having a df and one or two nf's at this age is very normal. We did top up feeds in the day because A times were too high to fit in the nap before the next E.

As for day sleep, if you have an average or high sleep needs baby then for sure they need a couple of good solid naps and perhaps a cat nap too (usually that is dropped around 6 months or so) but for some babies that are lower sleep needs they may not need quite as much.
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Offline Ima shel Alon

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #10 on: December 07, 2014, 16:55:05 pm »
I am distraught to think we were not feeding our hungry baby each of those times and it turns out then that the advice in the book is wrong?
I don't have the book with me so I can look up exactly what you mean. I think there is a confusion about the term "sleeping through the night" because that means something different in different ages, yk?
Motherhood comes with guilt, there is no way around it :-* I don't know which book you have, but I had the first one and in the PU/PD chapter there is no mention what so ever in what age it's appropriate to use the method. I used PU/PD with a newborn! Can you imagine how guilty I still feel?
I've been extending the A times and she still wakes up from naps after 35/40 mins.  If it's less than 3 hours since her last feed then we try to extend with PUPD but it is gruelling because it just doesn't seem to improve.
I have read back on your thread and I actually gave you a wrong advice before :P sorry. I said that she should still be one 2 full naps (1.5-2h each) and another CN, but I actually think considering her age that she is going through the 3-2 transition: All about the 3-2 transition- 5/6 months and it's really typical that there is a big jump of A times at this age but baby seems to not manage more than what he/she is already doing. So like I said before the only way to increase the A times is slowly and gradually to prevent OT, but if she can't manage close to 3h A time yet then you should keep on stretching A times and eventually dropping the CN, which you can do when the A times are higher.
If it's less than 3 hours since her last feed then we try to extend with PUPD but it is gruelling because it just doesn't seem to improve.
I never managed to extend a nap so I just dropped it. It put a huge stress on me to try and extend and we had an EASY like this: EASAE. Sometimes DS didn't manage the whole 3h without a feed so we fed a bit early. Your EASY shouldn't be rigid, yk? Listen and look at what he NEEDS.
we put her to bed at 6.30. She had DF at 11 and then woke at 3 but kept herself amused until 3.40 when I fed her . And then she woke at 6.45 hungry.

So it seems that she is not getting enough food in the day do you think?
She had 2 NF? Why is that an indication she is not getting enough food during the day? It's a great night! You DF before you go to bed and then you only need to wake up once to feed? Sounds like heaven to me!

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Offline michaeljacknnugg

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #11 on: December 07, 2014, 17:16:46 pm »
Just dropping in as you've had some great advice already.

The thing to remember is that the routines in the book are there as samples to illustrate a point rather than a rigid schedule to follow. My DS needs a lot less sleep than average so our routine looked very different from the books, but we were still following the method. At some points we did EAEAS but it didn't matter.

Two feeds a night at this age is great! Whether you do that as a dream feed or wait for her to wake naturally is up to you, because different ways suit different babies/families.

If she is an early bird (like my DS is!) then your days may always start earlier than 7am. Again, that time is just in the books as a guide. What do you want for your family? What will you need to do when you go back to work? Take that as a starting point and go from there. The goal here is to get her - and therefore all of you - as much sleep as is needed.
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Offline emmdol

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Re: five and a half month old waking before 7am
« Reply #12 on: December 07, 2014, 21:09:12 pm »
Hello to all three who have replied Ima,  Masyn and ME AND,

Thank you very much for taking time to give me your advice. I will follow it gladly. I think I was getting too caught up in trying to 'get it right' and stick to the plan and that has been giving me quite a bit if stress to be honest - especially trying to extend the daytime naps. I just want baby to have what she needs so good to hear that you all relaxed it somewhat whilst using the basic principles.

Feel much happier responding to baby, whilst also having a general routine.

Will keep following the posts.

Thanks again