frequent night wakings!!

[branran]

Hi - I posted this on the night wakings board and didn't get much of a response.  So I am posting it here in hopes that someone will have some advice.   I have a 7 month old little girl.  She is a very mobile little one.  She has been crawling since 5 1/2 months and pulling herself up soon after.  She has recently started cruising the furniture and using walker toys with minimal difficulty.  We have a good routine and she does great with naps.  She settles well on her own (most of the time.)  The problems we are having now are frequent night wakings and early morning wakings (4-5am)  which are requiring 1-2hrs of assisted resettling.  I know a lot of her problems come from milestones, but this has been going on for nearly a month and a half.  I feel like we are developing some bad habits.  I'm not sure how long I should attribute this to milestones and I'm not sure what steps to take next.  Obviously I don't want this to continue, but I am running out of ideas.  If anyone has any tips they would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!!

[Jaime]

can you post a sample schedule of your day?  that might help us see something.

[Mia and Lily's Mom]

Don't actually have a solution for you, our 6 month old dd has recently started waking multiple times a night again (just learned to sit).  I actually went back to swaddeling her last night which we had stopped about 3 weeks ago, and that helped her stay asleep for the remainder of the night last night. 
Looking forward to seeing other replies on this for tips and ideas.

Good luck, we will sleep again soon (hopefully) 

[branran]

I'm not sure what happened, but I thought I had my routine posted, maybe I'm not working this right!!  I will try again.

Our day goes something like this -

04-0530 wakes (still tired, needs a lot of help to resettle, usually take 1-2 hours, assissted to resettle)

   One of our biggest problems is that as soon as she is even semi-awake, she is reaching for the rails and trying to pull up. We have seen her with eyes mostly closed, squirming in bed, trying to pull up on the rails.  (kind of cute )
Anyway after our early waking it goes something like this
07/730 - wakes, eats 8oz bottle
activity
08/830 eats solids 4oz
activity
915-930 wind down
930 - nap ( usually about 1.5-2hrs)
Sometimes we have a tough time streching that awake time in the morning, I'm sure because she is tired from night
11/1130 wakes, eats 8oz bottle
activity
12/1230 - eats solids 4oz
activity
130/145 start wind down
145/200 nap (usually 1 hr)
300/330 - eats bottle
activity

Here is the time of day we sometimes have trouble.  Some times she will take a nap from anywhere from 5pm to 6pm (usually for 30mins - no longer than 45 mins)  Some days she just doesn't take that nap - I'm not sure if she is naturally trying to phase it out or not.  On some days she can go without the nap and be fine, other days she has more trouble

So next we have supper at 6 pm - 4oz solids
bath time after that

8oz bottle between 7/730
some low key activity after and then to bed at 745 - 815.

We have tried a little bit to play around with bed time just to see what would work best for her.  We haven't done anything with it for a while and honestly, nothing we did seemed to make one night different from another.
When she was sleeping good through the night, we were getting about 10hr from 830-0630 but once the mobilty started those times changed and the most we were getting for sleep through the night was 8hrs and 8hrs with multiple interuptions.
I know she may be one of those kids who requires less sleep, she has always kind of been that way.  I would be ok with the 5 am wakings if she were waking up happy, but I know she is not rested.  (ok 5am is pretty early, but you get what I mean )  If I can give you anymore info, please let me know, any suggestions would be appreciated. 
We are going to try the wake to sleep method starting again tomorrow(the first time didn't work out very well, we ended up awake for nearly 2hrs)  but we are going to try again.  It sure can't hurt!!  Thanks for reading my long post, hope it goes through, I'm not sure I can type all of this up again

[Tori's Mom]

I have just recently gotten a handle on our nightwakings!!! ( I probably just jinxed myself   )  Anyway, when she would wake up I would pick her up and rock her or hold her too long and she began to depend on me to go back to sleep.  Since I started to do PD instead she has slept much better.  Not sure your soothing technique at night but I know that this helped us.
HTH, I am still recovering from the not enough sleep zombie stage!!! 

[branran]

Thanks for the tip, that is where we are at too.  Just using the PD method.  In fact she usually fights more if we pick her up.  I'm not sure what to do with this problem.  I used to think that I was going to her too fast, so I held off a little, doesn't usually matter, she is usually standing up before I can even get to her room.  I know a lot has to do with milestones the pulling up, crawling, cruising all happening so fast and so close together, but I would think the newness would have worn off by now!!   Guess Not!

[Tori's Mom]

I also have Tori in a sleeping sac/bag so standing up is alittle harder for her.  She still does it but it wears her out faster!  Just an idea....good luck.

[branran]

Maybe we will try that, thanks.  Anything is worth a shot.  We are going to try the wake to sleep in the morning.  WISH ME LUCK!!