8 month old consistently waking at 3am!! HELP!

[donnaheal]

Hello all...I am new to these boards, so please bear with me. My daughter is 8 months old in one week, and for the past month or so has been consistently waking in the night anywhere from 1am to 3am. I have been using the BW methods since about 2 months old. I am a registered nurse going back to work in 4 months and am trying to wean her from her night feed. Her typical schedule is this:

7am awake and breastfeeds
~7:30am breakfast
~8:30am - 9:30am nap (anywhere from 1-2 hours)
11am breastfeeds
12:00pm lunch
1:00pm nap (anywhere from 1.5-2.5 hours)
3:00pm breastfeeds and sometimes a snack
5:00pm supper
6:00pm bath and then cuddles
6:45pm breastfeed
7:00pm bed

She inconsistently sleeps through the night but hasn't in about a month. We have tried EVERYTHING to get her to sleep through, but she absolutely won't! As a last resort we have tried letting her cry it out for the past five days. But she will cry off and on from 3am until 7am. We are all exhausted. Am I being unrealistic in wanting her to go through the night without a feed? Should I just keep feeding her and hoping she will grow out of it. It seems to me that it is becoming a habit. If I feed her she nurses for about ten minutes, goes back in her crib awake, falls asleep on her own and wakes at 7am. We are also still swaddling her.

PLEASE HELP!

[teezee]

i would absolutely encourage you NOT to continue letting lo cio!!  you are only making matters worse by breaking the trust that you have established with your lo over the past 8 months!...and in the end it will take much longer for you to build that trust up again than to just deal with the sleep issue on its own.
with that said, from what you said i doubt it is a hunger issue. if you do not feed your lo when she wakes what does she do? have you tried shhing in the crib and not taking her out? pu/pd? how long before your lo falls back to sleep??
 i may try extending the morning A time a little bit longer, although it is supposed to be the shortest A time of the day, it does seem a little short for a lo that age. it does seem that your lo is getting quite a bit of daytime sleep also - which is why i asked the questions earlier ..about what your lo does if you try and settle in the crib etc...my lo started waking and wanting to play - not by herself (would have been wonderful if it were that easy  ) but of course with mommy!  i had to tweak her routine and not 'stick to a schedule'.  when i went by what my lo needed and not by what 'time' it was she started sleeping better.  all lo's are different and it may not be daytime sleep related, but it seems that may be the issue here.  sometimes my lo will go 3 1/2 hrs between feeds, sometimes up to 5 1/2 hrs!! and still not wake for a feeding at night.  she is now down to 1hr naps/2 x /day...wish they were a bit longer still - but she doesn't need it.

[donnaheal]

Thank you so much for your reply. I will try these things and see what happens with it. I actually gave up on the cry it out before I read your post. You are right about causing more problems. She screams now when she goes into her crib for naps where she didn't before and is hard to get back to sleep in the night when I go in now (won't let me leave without crying). I have completely broken her trust!!
It is very frustrating trying to figure this all out with her...

[teezee]

good luck! let me know how things are progressing!

[donnaheal]

I tried this morning to put her down a little later, like you had suggested (about 9:00am). She only slept for half an hour and then was incredibly whiny for the morning. She wouldn't nurse or eat at noon and I had to put her back to bed. I'm sooo confused as to what is going on with her....?

[teezee]

just go slow maybe only 15 min at a time as it will take her time to adjust to the change and give it a few days and then if all is well try increasing 15 min more...hopefully you will see some improvements soon.  i don't understand why she wouldn't eat/nurse though?

[countrymum]

Okay - I'm new here too, so if anything I say goes against board ethics etc feel free to edit - I'm still trying to get the gist of things here myself! LOL

But - here's what we did with my son - who is now 23 mths and wakes only once a night to have his bum changed and goes right back to sleep.

He tended to wake at the exact same time every night - he had two times - 10pm and 2am.  So - we would go in JUST before that time and just sit quietly waiting for him to start to stir - as soon as we did we would put our hand on his back and just EXTREMELY quietly shhhh.  After the first few nights he settled immediately and after about a week or so he didn't even stir.  We would sit for half an hour waiting - and finally just go to bed! LOL

Now as I said he still wakes once a night, but its for a wet bum change and he immediately falls back to sleep on his own.  I can handle those wakeups with no problem!

I hope that helps - along with the tweaking of her nap times! \

Tamika