Hi,
I've posted a few times before, and despite things briefly getting better I feel like I'm back to square one and I really don't know why or how to fix it! My dd is waking about every two 90mins to two hours at night and she's having trouble settling for naps, which are only ever 40 mins (with a couple of exceptions where she has gone back to sleep by herself and gone for about an hour and a half). She does self settle for the odd nap, but that's getting less common now and there doesn't seem to be any pattern with the times that she does, likewise with bedtime. Nothing really seems to settle her other than feeding her, which I'm trying to only do when I've been trying to get her down for an hour, and I feel like it's a catch 22 - she'll be getting hungry but I feel like I'm just perpetuating. A variation of shush pat used to help but it really doesn't now. I tried pu/pd but it was just an hour of her crying pretty much non stop and when I read more about what it takes to make it work I don't think it's for us (I also have a two year old who's at home with just us two days a week). A pacifier will eventually help settle her sometimes, but I have to stay with her to stop her pulling out out and playing with it and I'd like not to use it as it doesn't really help in the night. I really don't know what else to try. She's not swaddled anymore as she was starting to roll.
Our routine (on a good day) looks something like this:
7.00 wake and eat (generally not very much as she's been snacking all night!)
9.15 - 10.00 sleep (put down about 8.50)
10.15 eat
12 - 2 sleep (in buggy, generally only 45 mins if in the cot)
2 eat
4.15 - 5 sleep
5 eat
6.30 bath and feed before bed by 7, at the moment she's rarely asleep much before 8 and sometimes I give in and feed her again before she actually goes off, I always put her down awake though
I had been doing a feed at 10 when I go to bed but stopped last week as it was making no difference and she would wake about 11.30. The first night I dropped it she didn't wake until 2so I think it was actually disturbing her more than helping. The last couple of nights she's woken for a feed about 11. She'll then go 3 hours until the next one, but after that she's waking every 90 minutes. I've resettled with the pacifier a couple of times but it's never for long and she wakes again 40 mins later at which point I feed her.
She's very easily distracted so I find it hard to get her to have good feeds during the day, which may be some of the problem at least. To try and get more calories into her during the day I had been giving up top up feeds but I don't know if that's helping to get her into the habit of snacking instead!
She's ebf. This morning she fought the first nap for an hour, I tried shushing, just sitting with her giving her a pacifier, nothing would settle her until I got her up. She would have fallen asleep straight away feeding but I didn't let her and instead gave her a bit of activity time then put her back down half an hour later. She cried pretty hard for a few minutes (I stayed with her), then actually found her thumb briefly and went to sleep within about five minutes.
Help please?! Thanks!
