Author Topic: 17 week night wakings  (Read 694 times)

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Offline thegirlwho

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17 week night wakings
« on: January 17, 2015, 18:36:37 pm »
My LO is 17 weeks. We have been working on an EASY schedule for about 1 month now as we were not in a v good routine. Our typical day looks like this

E 7:30
A 8:00
S 9:00
E 10:00
A 10:30
S 11:30
E 1.30
A 2:00
S 3:30
E 4:00
A 4:30
Bedtime routine starts at 6:00 and we do feed, story, bath, feed then bed around 7ish.

We are trying to increase his A time but he struggles to do longer than 1hr 30, especially first thing in the morning.

He generally goes down fairly well at night after his last feed. We are still working on our sush patting but he is now going into his cot sleepy but not asleep. We hope in a week or two to be able to put him down 'awake'.

Once he's asleep he'll generally do a 3-4 hour stretch which is lovely. We do a DF at 11pm or sooner if we hear him stir after about 10pm. He will go back into his bedside cot after thiis feed. It's after this that it all goes haywire! He will wake every 2 hours or so. Last night he woke at 12:15, 2:30, 3:30 and then 5:45. I usually pick him up when he stars to cry and feed him back to sleep. I wait a while and then pop him back in his cot. He frequently wakes 20 mins or so after being put in his cot and so we often bring him in to our bed and end up co sleeping. When we do this he can go 3-4 hours easily so he must be after comfort not just food.

I am not expecting him to sleep through the night, and I'm not expecting him to go without food. I'm happy to feed him twice between his 11pm DF and his wake up. But 4 times.... It's exhausting!!!

What do we do?? Do we need to spend some time persevering with sush pat at night time, rather than relying on feeding him back to sleep??
 
HELP! I'm tired :-(

Offline katie80

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Re: 17 week night wakings
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2015, 00:40:25 am »
Hi there,

For how long have these NWs been happening? There is usually a decent growth spurt around 4mo and also some big developmental leaps that are notorious for causing a sleep regression. So, that may be part of the problem.

I do think another part is the daytime routine. You're right to be pushing his A time longer. I'm sure it's hard to do in the morning, as he has quite a long A time at the end of the day and then sleeps an unsettled night. But, keeping that first A time too short will likely only perpetuate the problem. He doesn't sleep a full nap after that first A, thus another sign it's too short. Try keeping him up even just 5-10min longer for a few days and then another 5-10min for a few days until you start getting a longer nap there. Ideally, you want an A time of about 1h40/45min-2h at 4mo old. The longer A times and hopefully longer naps should naturally push your feeds to 3.5hr apart, which will help him take bigger feeds and hopefully help him last longer at night as well. This should also help cut down that long A time at the end of the day, which is likely making him go to bed OT and causing part of the unsettledness.

Finally, I do think it's worth persevering with some shh/pat at NWs. Since you've been using it during the day, he will be used to it. He should be able to go at least 3-4hr between feeds at night as well.  So, if he wakes before that time I'd use shh/pat to get him back to sleep. If he's having none of it after 20-30min, you can go ahead and feed as he's quite young still, but hopefully he'll start going back to sleep sooner and stretching those wakings out. Are you sure he's warm enough in his cot?