My 3 month old has swapped 5hr night sleeps for 3hr sleeps!

[newmum2Ellie]

My three month old just doesn't seem to want to settle in the evenings anymore despite us having had a bath and bed routine since she was born.

For the last two evenings we've given her a bottle feed at about 7pm (she's normally completely breast fed) and it's worked (fingers crossed!). This was in addition to breast feeding her at 5pm. Both nights she drifted off to sleep and woke up much happier 45 mins later for her 8pm feed.

The only problem now is that - instead of going her usual five hours during the night - she's now waking up every three hours through the night like clockwork. Last night she had half a 9oz bottle at the 7pm feed, fed from both breasts at 8pm, had some more of the bottle at 10pm and - when she woke at 1am downed the rest of the bottle and fed from both breasts. At that point I thought she MUST be full enough to sleep a five hour stretch but no - at 4am I was up and feeding her again!

She went through a growth spurt about ten days ago where she did nothing but sleep and eat all day and then she settled down - could she still be going through this?

I've decided to try and suppliment her feeds during the day with expressed or bottle milk however we tried it this morning and she didn't want to know.

Any advice would be much appreciated!...

Eleanor's Mum xx :roll:

[Katet]

Sounds very much like a growth spurt, if you were supplementing with bottles at the previous growth spurt, then your supply will not have adjusted.

So if you want to keep bf, you actually need to pump the amount you are giving from a bottle or just keep offering the breast everytime she is hungry... just increasing her food in a bf baby doesn't actually always work, you need to increase your supply by offering more & also that will change the "consistency" of the milk too. As the milk "type" changes with each growth spurt too.

HTH

[newmum2Ellie]

Thanks for the tips. I was expressing every time I bottle fed (apart from in the middle of the night when I would just express more in the mornings). We switched to giving her formula for hungrier babies at night time (bottle made the dream feed possible for the first time!), increased her nap times during the day, and put her in her nursery at night time. We also started PU/PD during the day when she woke too early from a nap and that also worked.

Last week she actually went through the night for the first time which was fantastic. The following night she woke for a 4am feed and the night after she slept through again. We thought we were beginning to make real headway and then she started being really grumpy in the evenings again and ever so difficult to settle for her late afternoon/evening catnap.

Whereas last week she was going down for naps during the day with very little fuss, and only waking once or not at all during the night, now she can't nap without first getting upset and I'm trying ever so hard not to overstimulate her.

Yesterday I took her out in the car and let her sleep for 2hours in the late afternoon, thinking that might put her in a better mood for the evening ahead but it didn't make much difference.

Last night we had a dreadful time. She had her dream feed at 10.30pm and took her usual 4oz. Then she woke at 1.30am seemingly hungry so I gave her a bottle and she had another 4oz. When she woke again at 4am I knew she wasn't hungry so I did PU/PD which worked but only for half an hour to an hour at which point she woke up and I had to start all over again. We repeated this several times until she was finally due for her feed at 7am.

Today I wondered whether perhaps - at 14 weeks - she was ready to start moving on to a four hour routine so we left her sleeping until 10.45 (nearly 2hrs). She didn't seem hungry but by 11am she'd gone 4hrs so I fed her anyway. She fed reasonably well but didn't seem like she was particularly bothered about it either way. Then she got tired an hour later so we tried putting her down awake and she completely resisted. She was so upset I tried feeding her and - sure enough - she was hungry. She had about 5-10mins breast feed and I put her in her cot awake. She went off with the usual amount of fuss but seems to want to wake up every half an hour or so. Most of the time she will settle herself but that's only if I leave her crying for five mins or so (if her crying escalates I always intervene but this is more like whinging than real crying).

I don't know what to do. She was doing the three hour routine like magic (apart from struggling a little in the evening) but now it all seems to have gone out of the window! I'm sure her growth spurt has ended as she's not wanting to feed as much as she was a week or so ago.

The most difficult time is still between 4pm and 7pm when she just never has any consistency. Until recently I thought I had a textbook/angle baby but I'm beginning to wonder if I now have a spirited one!

As it's become a slightly different problem do I need to type out a new post to get a response or is this ok?

Hope you can help

Best wishes,

Eleanor's mummy

[Lªuren]

hi there

This sounds exactly like my DS when he wanted to make the transition from 3 to 4 hr EASY.
Can I ask;

1. Are you feeding her every 3 hours during the day? if so, Is she taking the same amount from you or acting like she is not hungry?
2. Is there anyway you can put her down for a nap as soon as you see her cues, my DS can only stay awake 2 full hours, so I make sure I have him swaddled in his cot after 1hr 50mins so he can wind down for 10 mins.
3. Apart from being hungry during the night? Is she teething? Cold in her bed? Or kicking covers off? and waking at the other times?


Around Christmas my DS was the same age as your LO he was playing with his feeds and getting upset because I was following his 3 hour routine and he wasn't hungry, at the time I put it down to a cold bug?!   This went on for 2 weeks. Eventually I decided one day to follow his lead and only feed him during the day when he was hungry - I wrote the times down and over the course of a few days it transpired he had put himself on a 4 - 41/2hr EASY and took more at each feed.  The only problem this caused was that she usually (on his 3 hr EASY) had a nap a couple of hours before his official bedtime, on the new 4 - 41/2hr EASY he was missing this nap and was EXTREMELY cranky and was over tired for his bed/last feed at 8ish and his bath (not in the order).   Over the last couple of weeks I have had to adjust his routine to make sure that he would be tired enough for his last nap, even if that means waking him up from his afternoon sleep a little early so we can fit another one in. 

His normal day now looks like this:

0700 Up
0730 Eat
0800 Activity
0900 Sleep  (although today he went for 3 1/2 hrs!!    another first)
1030 Activity
1130or1200 Eat
A
S
A
1600 usually next E or thereabouts
A
S
A
Bath 1930
Eat 2000
Sleep 2030 in cot (usually awake with winnie the pooh light show on)

This is only 4 feeds in a day, I tried a D/F once and he still woke at the same time in the night - so I never carried on with it.

After reading other sleep posts it seems that a good day routing sets the standard for a good night one. My DS has slept through the last 2 nights, after having 2 weeks of waking every 20mins to 2 hrs - there is light at the end of the tunnel for us all.

Let me know how you get on  {{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}

[newmum2Ellie]

Thanks for that. I think you're right - I need to start feeding her when she's hungry during the day and see if she goes longer.

It seems to me that she can last quite a while in the morning but then, as the day goes on, the time between feeds gets shorter. Yesterday she went nearly four hours in the morning but, after the 2pm feed, she wanted more at 4pm. I'm not sure if this is normal or whether perhaps she's not getting enough from me? The other thing is that she can't do activity for much longer than an hour before she gets cranky so there's only really a couple of hours between naps. That means the routine is off kilter as I often don't feed her when she wakes up.

Anyway, she has slept through FOUR nights on the trot now so I'm really hoping we've cracked it! Still no idea why we had that really bad night though?? The key to it for me seems to have been teaching her to go to sleep on her own during the day (during which time she found her thumb!) and dream feeding. It took about a week of dream feeding for her to stop her habitual waking during the night though. So glad we stuck with it as my sleep is now a Godsend!

Isn't it great when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. So Glad your L/O is sleeping through now too. Fingers crossed they both keep it up!!

Ellie's mum xx