waking up after 30-45 min. at night, why??

[lizjackson]

my almost 4 month girl has begun waking between 30-45 minutes after being put down for the night.  any ideas why?  she began this about 2 weeks ago.  She is getting 2 2 hour naps and 1 45 minute nap during the day, so I don't think she is sleep deprieved.  Not sure what is going on.  I will look in on her and she will be out like a light and then 10 minutes later, wide awake.  She settles and goes back down but I pick her up to do this so that she does not get upset and hard to settle to sleep again.  What should I do to stop this?  Thank you..

[teezee]

i believe that either your lo is overtired right before bed or overstimulated in her last A time before bed. if you do have to go in and settle her, try to above all settle first in the crib by shhing and/or patting or placing a hand on her etc as that will continue to help her be able to self soothe back to sleep. if you could post your routine i could take a look and see if i can help out further.

[lizjackson]

thank you for the help..here is our routine

7:00-7:30 wake and Nurse
7:30-9:00 Activity (reading, play gym, singing, tummy time)
9:00-10:30ish Nap
10:30 nurse
10:45to 12:15 Activity
12:15 to 1:00 Nap
1:00 Nurse
1:15 to 3:00 Activity
3:00 to 5:00ish Nap
7:00 bath, nurse and to bed around 7:30

Tonight she got up around 8:00 and 8:30.  Any ideas?  I appreciate it.

[teezee]

well the i can see a couple things that look a little bit funky to me...the last nap of the day is generally a catnap - half hr to 45 min in length - sometimes what you are doing works for some ppl but doesn't seem to be for your lo.  i would work on extending the pm nap and shortening the catnap as too much sleep right before bed may be making your lo not 'tired enough' to go to sleep at bedtime and stay asleep kwim?

also, don't know if you are or not but i would def work on getting lo on more of a 4 hr routine - you are only doing 4 feeds during the day which is really good but i think you need to spread out the second and third feedings a bit more so the third feeding is closer to 4 hrs between the bedtime feeding....1 to 7 is a long time to go without a feeding for a lo! even if you can get feedings to 3.5 hrs - i think that is just fine

what is the evening like right before bed? what kind of activities take place??

[lizjackson]

ok, i really messed up posting that schedule.  She does not go 6 hours without a feeding..  I neglected to put in a 2 feedings that occur before and after that 3:00 nap.  I try to cluster feed then and at 7:15ish because she is not sleeping through the night yet, so I am trying to increase day calories.  So you think that I need to extend her to a 4 hour EASY?  Is that the end goal? 

I agree that the 3:00 to 5:00 nap is not ideal.  I was having trouble getting her to go down for the 5pm catnap, I think because her daddy gets home around 5pm and she does not want to sleep when he gets home.  So I just let her make the sleep schedule and she seemed to do well with sleeping for a good chunk from 3-5 but I definatly wondered if this was too much sleep to late in the day.   What do you think my afternoons should look like.  I guess I should have mentioned that with the wakings right after putting her down, she also gets up 2 times during the night to feed.  Last night, just as an experiment, she woke up at 2am and I went in and put her paci in and patted her tummy and she feel back asleep until 4am.  What does that mean?  That she does not really need all those night feedings?  Sorry for the extra quesitons..

Our evenings are pretty calm.  She does not use the play gym.  She is held a lot by her dad and she sits in the swing when we prepare and eat dinner.  Then it is usually time to get ready for bed.  She loves her bathtime so we let her be in there for probably 20 minutes.  We wash her and then let her play and soak in the tub.  That is pretty much it for evening time. 

Thank you for your help.

[brightside]

I would also guess that bedtime is a bit too late. If she wakes at 5pm from her nap then going to bed at 7.30 means she has been up for 2.5 hours which seems a bit long to me. My 4 month old can only manage 2 hours max.

[teezee]

generally, with night wakings, if a lo has gone back to sleep and sleeps past an hr it means the waking wasn't hunger related. if lo wakes within the hr, it will mean lo was hungry and feed.

i would def try to cut out some of the feeds as lo def at this age does not need to be fed right before and after a nap, it sounds like your lo has a snacking habit...and that could also related to the night wakings as lo is not able to fill up enough (for lack of hunger) to be able to make it through the night (or a good portion of...) if lo feeds every 2hrs during the day expect the same feeding habits at night. i understand about the cluster feeding, but that may not work for your lo (or not anymore) and she may need to go longer periods without food during the day so she can take bigger feedings that sustain her throughout the night.  if you are worried she will wake due to hunger during the day try giving her some water before nap time (as long as lo has been gaining weight and thriving i don't see a problem with this..), as it will digest quickly and when she wakes her belly will be empty and ready for a good feeding!  slowly, stretch out the feeding times 15 min or so every day (or whatever your lo can handle without being upset) distract her with toys or singing or something.

[BabyBsMommy]

Our lo started waking 45 min into his night time sleep around the same time.  We changed his nap routine from 3 1.5 (when we could extend them!) and a catnap, to 2, 1.5-2 hour naps (again when we can extend them) and no more than an hour catnap later in the day.  He has his second nap from about 12:15-2:15 and the short nap between 4-5.  We wake him up if he is still asleep shortly after 5 because we learned the hard way that if he naps much past then, he is a bear to put down to sleep!  I feed him at 5pm (takes close to 30min) activities that are low-key (ie. just looking around on blanket on the floor or a walk in the stroller) bath at 6:30, feed at 7:00 in his nursury and to sleep by 7:30.  I know he's up 2.5 hours but as long as we keep things low key for that last hour with the bath and last feed he makes it through quite well.  As soon as we did this (we changed up that catnap time a few days ago) he has slept through the 45 min mark each night for the first time in 3 weeks.  Good luck!  Oh, and my girlfriend's lo had the same problem at the same age, too, so it makes me wonder if it is a developmental blip in their development at that age, maybe a signal to us that it's time to change their naps.....?  I wonder this because this new nap routine closely resembles that of the four hour EASY....

[Elphyrafire]

I just have to jump in and say to listen to  Teezee's advice- she was spot on for my 4.5 month lo. He was snacking and I didn't even know it. He needed to be on a 4 hour EASY and he was still on a 3Hour. Everynight he'd wake up crying after 45 minutes of sleeping and  he was waking in the night to eat still! I thought I should feed him in the day  more b/c he still wasn't sleepiing through but it was just the opposite! I was feeding him every 3 hours but since he wasn't actually hungry then he'd only snack (I'm BF-ing so I had no idea he wasn't eating much at each feed). Now that he's on the 4 hour he actually eats MORE than on the 3 and doesn't wake in the night to eat anymore (not saying he sleeps through yet but we're on our way!). GL

[BabyBsMommy]

I went on 4 hour EASY (well not always EASY, sometimes EASAE) 2 days ago and I have only had to feed Brenden once between 3-4am...he has finally been sleeping past the 45 min mark at night - last night slept 7:40pm-1:20am (patten him for 5 min back to sleep - this is his habitual wake time so we are going to w2s it) 1:25-3:45am slept, fed@ 3:45 and slept again until almost 7am.  Yippee!