Author Topic: Sleepless in Seattle  (Read 1310 times)

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Offline Ceri

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« on: October 05, 2005, 03:17:51 am »
Hi

I've recently put my DD Zoe (7 months old on 4 Oct) on the EASY routine. Things are moving in the right direction. In the last ten days she's moved from feeding night and day every two hours to a 4 hour daytime schedule, she is no longer nursed to sleep, and now sleeps in a crib instead of our bed.

However she is still waking at night in much the same pattern (2am, 4.45, 5.45). I'm pretty confident it's not hunger. I end up standing by the crib most of the night whilst she moves between invitations to play, and frustration at not being able to get back to sleep - she sometimes rocks on all fours, or bangs her head against the crib. I've tried the wake to sleep at night but that seems to just shift the waking times, so we do PU/PD, but I'm getting very tired, and so is Zoe.

I know she is having trouble making the transition between that first light sleep and the next phase. The daytime naps are erratic, sometimes good but often broken up (1 hour, followed by a half hour, or 2 half hours, over the 2 hour slot). I'm using wake to sleep to try and lengthen these. She eats solids with gusto twice a day, and I'm about to start a third meal of solids. She's just getting over her first cold, I don't think she's teething, but she is very active - mastered cross-crawling a couple of weeks ago and can stand in crib.

Given that she's made such great progress, I feel like I'm being impatient asking this but assuming she is simply waking out of habit, how long might it take for the night wakings to disappear using PU/PD?? Could the fact that the crib is in our bedroom be one of the reasons she's still waking? DH has moved out to get some sleep...

Here's her day:

6.45 - 7am wake up/BF
9am Nap
11am Solids (takes 2 1/2-3 oz) followed by BF
1pm Nap
3pm Solids (again, 2 1/2-3 oz) followed by BF
[she has just decided she doesn't want the 3rd nap]
6pm BF
6.30pm Bath
7pm Bed (occasionally wakes at 9pm
10.30 - 11pm DF

Any advice gratefully received...

Ceri

Offline chickadeebesty

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Sleepless in Seattle
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2005, 03:45:47 am »
hi ceri!
the same thing was happening with my 7 mth old ds.  he also just cut his bottom two teeth, and started pulling up and crawling like your little one. we "cured" (touch wood) the heavy duty night wakings by extending awake times during the day.  a four hour EASY wasn't enough for my spirited, active lo.  i am keeping him up between 2hr15 and 2hr30 right now- and working on steadily increasing it to 3hr, or whatever it takes.
i also completely dropped the dream feed.  my pediatrician said that he was old enough to go all night, so i just stopped it.  (she was horrified that i was waking him to feed him... guess she's not a bw fan!)
now he is waking around 2am and screaming because he's pulling up and getting stuck.  (we are practicing a lot during the day, so hopefully that will stop happening soon!) but my husband goes in and puts him down, and he goes right back to sleep.  i've heard him wake around 5am a few times, but he's started settling himself.
one thing that saved me is getting my husband to go in during the night.  not smelling me, or hearing me, etc.  keeps things more low key and he seems to go back to sleep more quickly.
now i'm just waiting for something else to come up to disrupt his sleep...  more teeth, walking, who knows! :)
hope longer awake times work for you.  we tried so many different things before that didn't work!
betsy

Offline Ceri

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« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2005, 10:44:18 am »
Thanks for the suggestions/advice. We'll give the longer awake time a try and see what happens!

Ceri and Zoe