Author Topic: 7m/o frequent night wakings.  (Read 14677 times)

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Offline newkidontheblock

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #15 on: May 12, 2019, 11:03:14 am »
Not a bad night, right? With regards to fixed wake ups, with my daughter, I was very particular about fixed wake up and fixed bedtime. She was very spirited and thrived on a set routine. Even 5 minutes here and there made a big difference. With by son, I let him wake up naturally and adjust the first nap accordingly. He is more of an Angel/ Textbook baby. So you will need to decide based on your LO's personality. You can always start with fixed wake ups when you eventually go back to work. At least you can grab a little extra shut eye now. Xx






Offline MiniNs

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #16 on: May 12, 2019, 14:30:01 pm »
no, not a bad night at all. I’m really so very pleased he’s stopped waking so frequently. Thank you for the support!

I have a 2.5year old who is up between 6-6:30am so no extra shut eye unfortunately 😀He’s definitely a spirited baby and I think perhaps we’d benefit from having set naps at maybe 9:15 and 14:00 or something. I probably need to push  him consistently to 3 hours A time before I do that though?

Today ended up like this;
WU 6:45
S: 9:00-9:30 (car nap - day trip) 10:40-11:20 (car nap day trip)
S: 14:00-15:40
BT: 18:20 (I had aimed for 18:30 with a later WU from second nap but he wasn’t interested in his feed at all and I put him down awake and he settled within 5mins)
NWs: 21:10&21:15 (dummy) - potentially getting hungry as only 1oz in BT feed.
DF 22:00

And that’s as far as we’ve got seems how it’s currently just after the DF. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we can have another more settled night.


What’s the best way/order to push to 3 hours A? Push one nap at a time? Does it matter which order? When would you advise trying it, given the results we’re currently getting on 2h45 and the fact that he was literally just 7m/o this week?
« Last Edit: May 12, 2019, 21:10:15 pm by MiniNs »

Offline MiniNs

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #17 on: May 12, 2019, 21:14:01 pm »
Sorry, just realised I signed off there with a barrage of questions! Just keen to get some advice on where to go from here, and when! ☺️

Offline MiniNs

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #18 on: May 13, 2019, 05:26:43 am »
So after yesterday’s post we didn’t have a great night 😖

Dreamfeed at 10pm. Awake at 3:00, needed rocking & holding until 3:45. Awake 5:20. Up at 6:20.

He’s then napped 9-11 and then I tried to stretch until 14:00 for pm nap but he was beside himself by 13:45 and I had to put him down for a nap again.
« Last Edit: May 13, 2019, 13:04:53 pm by MiniNs »

Offline newkidontheblock

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #19 on: May 13, 2019, 13:20:21 pm »
Many hugs! They really do keep you guessing, don't they :-*

So if you want to push A times, I would suggest keeping your A time very low key, especially for at least half an hour before the nap and then just try to keep them up a little longer - walk around singing, go outside etc. And be consistent, hold at that time for a few days before evaluating the effect.

Are any more of his teeth coming in?






Offline MiniNs

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #20 on: May 13, 2019, 14:14:54 pm »
Thanks - I feel like this is already what I’m doing to get to 2h45, especially in the afternoons. But could perhaps try and extend the mornings to 3h A for now. Tricky with the school run as that falls at 2h30 and he tends to have a CN. It’s never straight forward is it?

His pm nap today was 13:45-15:10 so I’m going to try and do 3h A time to BT to avoid to much of an early night. We’ll see how it goes 🤷🏻‍♀️ no more teeth coming in - I keep checking in the hope that there’s an excuse for the wakings and not just me failing!

Offline newkidontheblock

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #21 on: May 13, 2019, 14:51:35 pm »
You are not failing! Don't think that for a second :-* With my daughter, I was so obsessed with getting it right. Right now, I'm just taking each day as it comes. Because there is always something. The first year is just full of phases and we just need to get through it with as much grace as we can muster up :)

So EASY is basically just a sequence of events to follow. You can work your routine around it according to what suits you. For instance, with my daughter, we only ever got 1 long nap of 1.5 hours in the morning. No amount of pat-shush etc could ever help us extend the others. So she did 1 long nap and 2 cat naps for the longest time. So since you have a school run, you can plan for a sling nap at that time and work the rest of the day around it.

Also another point to note, is what kind of an A do they need to bed. My daughter couldn't handle a long A at all. She did loooong As through the day but she needed her shortest before bed. Whereas my son needs a long A to bed. Does he settle independently?






Offline MiniNs

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #22 on: May 13, 2019, 21:20:40 pm »
He is self settling, mostly yes. He sometimes needs sssh pat but I think that’s when I’ve not timed it right, a majority of the time he just wriggles a bit and falls to sleep and I’ve seen him do this on the monitor at night too.

When we are home all day he tends to do a longer nap in the morning (1h40-2hrs) and then a shorter nap in the afternoon (1h-1h20) - sometimes I can extend with ssh pat but mostly not, and even when I do it’s only normally another 20mins before he wakes again. He’s defo not shown to be coping very well with a long A before bed. 2h45 is definitely his max there and could probably happily go shorter. On the night where we’ve done 2h45+ he’s struggled to drink his bottle because he’s spent the entire time rubbing his eyes. However, the best night we had, so far, was one of those nights...go figure!

I sometimes think I could push his first A time, but as he naps so well there sometimes I’m scared to haha, and also that’s the nap that is disrupted by the school run (in the car) 3 days per week and becomes 2 catnaps - one at 8:45 and ten another around 10:30/11ish when I quite often have to APOP to get him back down for a bit before lunch. Is that ok or confusing his self settling though?

We are still having good and bad nights. Sometimes he’s still waking around 9:30pm (I dreamfeed at 10) and then again at 3ish, sometimes again around 5am. Some nights he’ll only wake at 1 or 2 of these points.


Offline MiniNs

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #23 on: May 14, 2019, 05:37:19 am »
So yesterday ended up like this;

WU: 6:20
S: 9:00-11:00
S: 14:00 - 15:10
BT: 18:10 (probably not asleep until 18:15/20 though as not very well settled)
NWs:
21:30, 21:55 (did dreamfeed here), 2:45-3:10 every 5mins, 5:15, 5:25 - ended up rocking and it needed to be constant, for half an hour before He has fully settled.
WU 6:30.   (When, I’ll be totally honest, I just woke up and cried)

Offline MiniNs

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #24 on: May 15, 2019, 05:14:34 am »
Things just seem to be going from bad to worse now.

Last night was-

Bed: 6:10
NW: 7:30pm
Dreamfeed 10pm
NWs
2:00., 2:20, 2:25
4:20, 4:30
5:30- wouldnt resettle so rocked constantly until 6 but didn’t go back to sleep- dozed for a bit at best, so todaybwas am EW WU of 5:30 I guess.

I am still sticking to 2h45-3h A and his naps are between 1h20-2hrs long.

I’m exhausted and also have a 2.5year old so can’t ‘sleep when baby sleeps’ either.

Offline Katet

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #25 on: May 15, 2019, 08:42:29 am »
That many wakings to me say that teeth moving under the gums maybe the reason rather than routine. My DS2 used to be terrible for a week or so before you even saw a tooth.
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Offline MiniNs

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #26 on: May 15, 2019, 09:40:32 am »
With his first two teeth he was waking a lot for a few days nights beforehand - but his cries were different, like painful cries. At the time I thought he was perhaps constipated or had tummy ache, but then a few days later we saw the first shine of a little tooth. Same happened again with the second one a week later.

These current wakings don’t seem to be following the same pattern. But I have been rubbing meds’ on his gums at BT just in case.

Offline newkidontheblock

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #27 on: May 17, 2019, 03:11:16 am »
I agree with Katet. I don't think this is just routine related. We have had one horrible night like this and later I realised it was a growth spurt but I don't think that is the answer when it is so many days. Does he wake for the dreamfeed? If not, you could try not giving and then just giving it to him when he wakes up to see if that makes any difference at all. We recently started realised that the DF was unsettling baby through the night. Just another idea. What do you think?






Offline MiniNs

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #28 on: May 17, 2019, 05:40:35 am »
I’m not sure there is much more I can do with his routine at the moment. He is napping at around 9am and 2pm most days, totalling between 2.5-3.5 hours over the two (depending on whether he’s napped at home) I am going to keep trying to stretch more consistently to 3h A but I definitely think 2h45 works better for him, especially before BT.

Yesterday’s EASY:
WU: 6:00
S: 8:45-9:05 (car school run) & then 10:30-11:20
S: 14:45-16:00 (I tried twice from 14:15 to put him down but he wasn’t tired at all!)
BT: 18:45
DF: 22:00- refused
NWs: 1:30 (needed APOP), 5:00 (dummy and ssh Pat)
WU 6:00

Today’s EASY so far:
WU 6:00
S: 9:00-11:00
And I’m aiming for a 14:00 S this afternoon with an 18:30 BT. Although the last 2 days, he has resisted going down at that time and has ended up closer to 15:00!

It’s funny, I was thinking about the dreamfeed myseLF last night.

He used to wake for it around 10:30, I brought it forward to 10pm to be able to wake him myself, and he started to sleep better afterwards.

The last 2-3 nights when I’ve done the DF he has at maximum had half of the feed, last night he wouldn’t take it at all. I started to wonder if perhaps he doesn’t really want it anymore and I am therefore just disturbing him for no reason.

After not DFing, as he 100% refused it, he then woke at 1:30 & wouldnt resettle in his cot. I picked him up and held him for a minute to calm him down whilst I decided if I was going to make him another feed up, and he fell back to sleep. He then woke again at 5:00 for his dummy and was up at 6:00am, taking his WU feed at 6:10.

So I might not bother with the DF now, but would you then feed on his first wake up beyond 10pm? Even though he hasn’t been having night feeds?
« Last Edit: May 17, 2019, 13:11:36 pm by MiniNs »

Offline *Ali*

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Re: 7m/o frequent night wakings.
« Reply #29 on: May 17, 2019, 20:01:57 pm »
Reading through your earlier posts on this thread my first thought was that he sounds hungry when he won't settle later in the night. I'd definitely try feeding when he wakes. Most babies are having night feeds at this age. Even if they've slept without nfs before, growth spurts, developmental leaps or a particularly active day can mean they need feeding at night again.

How is his solids intake? Could any food be cause discomfort or gas do you think?
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