night waking (is it hunger or habit) and BT waking

[julestc]

Hi there,

I've got my 8 week old baby girl on somewhat of an EASY routine that is flexible from day to day but generally looks like this:

7am - wake, feed
8:30am - sleep ( generally this is her longest sleep and will sleep from 1.5 - 2 hours)
10am - wake, feed
11:30am - sleep (will often just sleep for 1 hour)
1pm ish - feed
2:30pm - sleep (will often just sleep for 45 mins and difficult to resettle)
4pm ish - feed
will not sleep from 4pm till BT
6pm- baby massage, then feed
7pm - bed
10pm - bath and bottle
3:30am - feed

I have two questions relating to my EASY rooutine and bub:

1.  It is super difficult to get her to take a small nap after the 4pm feed so she's often up until 7pm and then when we put her to bed after feeding her she takes about 30mins to settle and then exactly 20mins later will always wake up and we have to resettle her which usually takes another 20 mins.  What can I do to change this habit?

2. She wakes pretty much at 3:30 or 3:45 am every night.  Is this just a habit and I should resettle her or is she hungry - I have been feeding her every night at this time and she will generally go back to sleep quite quickly.  If it's a habit, what should I do?

3. Oh and one more question, should i be trying to resettle her to make her daytime naps longer?

Thanks for your advice

[Buttonbobs]

Hi there,

Looking at that EASY and he length of those naps it does seem that 1.5 hours is a good first A time for you, and it sounds as if you're often getting good naps off the back of that. Perhaps she prefers her first A to be shorter and she might need a little extra A time after that first nap. Could you try extending that second A time to 1 hour 40 mins and see if this improves the length of that second nap?

That third nap looks like a UT nap too, given that she wakes after 45 mins and is difficult to resettle. You could try to help her resettle but you're more likely to have success with this if she's tired enough. A lengthening of that A time before the third nap might help you here too. How is her mood on waking from this nap usually?

Because you're getting a couple of shorter naps it seems like she is then probably slightly OT by BT and that is giving the characteristic WU shortly after BT. you might find that extending A times and getting longer naps helps this as the A time to bed should then be shorter, but if not you could always bring BT a little earlier to help prevent the OT.

Most LOs will keep at least one night feed until they are well established on solids (my DD only have one nf at this age and it was a DF) but I certainly would expect your LO to feed at some point in the night. So yes, I would keep feeding her when she wakes.

I hope that helps x