Erractic Night Wakings at 3 months

[cmhbhh]

I have an angel baby who is 3 months old now.  He has slept through the night since he was about 6 or 7 weeks but has never woken up at the same time.  He goes to sleep on his own and takes great naps (though some have been known to be 45 minutes).  About a week ago he has started waking in the middle of the night at random times.  One night he'll wake up at 2, the next 3:30, then maybe 5 or 6.  It is never the same time.  I figured it was a growth spurt and started feeding like crazy.  It hasn't helped at all.  What to do now?  Is it a feeding issue?  He usually will go 3 hours happily during the day between feedings, but those are the nights he gets up the most.

Also, when he has such abnormal wake times.  We don't have a good rhythm to our day.  I'd like to start our day at 8, but say he sleeps until 6:30, I feed him, then put him back down.  Do I wake him at 8 and feed him again (only and hour and a half later), or do I let him go until 9:30?  He's such a good baby and I hate to complain, but I sure could use the help!!!

[pohare]

Hi
We are having the exact same problems with our 13wk old. She more often than not slept right through from a couple of weeks old ( from about 11pm til 6am) but now she is doing what you mention - waking at 3 some nights, 4 or 5 the next. Its making a schedule from one day to the next very difficult.
Hope you get some advice soon. It will be interesting to see if anyone can help.
Take care
Pauline & Grace

[Erin (redstarfalling)]

Hi - I'm going to move this to the General Sleep Forum - some of it is more sleep issues than Breastfeeding, so you might get some better suggestions with the Sleep people! 

[annamum]

As to abnormal wake times, I know what you mean  :lol: . My dd has always been like this. Through her first year, she was always waking at different times, anything between 6 am and 9 am. I tried to wake her up in the morning at 8 am but decided it wasn't working for us either. First of all, she hates being awaken and sometimes just slept through my attempts of waking her, sometimes was so grumpy, she didn't obviously get enough rest. So I decided to go with a flow. Because of this erratic wakings our days also didn't have the same pattern every day.
To make things worse, she was not consistent with her naps, for example if she woke up early, one would assume she would go earlier for her nap... WRONG. She actually went later. On the days she slept longer, her nap was earlier than "usual".

The only thing that helped was knowing her awake times. For example, at some point she was able to go 2 hours before her first nap, and 4 hours before a second one. I was rather using this as a reference than a clock, we never established a routine based on a clock.

Unfortunately, things didn't improve as she got older, she still wakes at different times, however she keeps a rythm for a few days, or a couple of weeks and then changes it again. It is not easy to plan around it but eventually I relaxed and don't worry about this too much. She is also now dropping her nap and things are again upside down. We have bedtime starting at 8 pm on days without nap and at 10 pm on days with a nap.

To answer a first part of your question... This might be a growth spurt as your little one is 3 months old, this is a possibility, as well as the fact he wakes up at different times of the night. Sometimes, filling your baby's tummy during a day won't stop him from nighwakings  :cry: . Sometimes, and this is what I think might be going on, these are wakings caused by developmental changes. Is he learning some new skills? Rolling over? This may be the reason too for wakings. Also, is he hungry when he wakes up, if yes, by all means do feed him. At this age they grow a lot and some of this angel babies who slept through start waking again, also because during a day they are too busy to eat properly...