night waking has started earlier not moved to later!

[erinsmum36]

Hi - my 11 week old has was sleeping from 7pm ish (bed time), no dream feed and sleeping through till 4am (having progressed from 12:30am, then 3am then 4 or even 5 am). For the last 10 days she has been waking for a feed between  1:30 - 2am and then sleeping till 6:30, when I now have to start the day (was having to wake her up as late as 8am on the old routine). I realise that this is still only one night feed and that I am lucky, but I am confused as to why it is moving backward towards bedtime and not gradually phasing out towards morning?
She is currently on 3 hour easy and weighs around 14lbs. I am wondering if she should be on 4 hour easy now or if it is too early? Would this help, or does anyone have any more ideas. Its not the one night feed that I am concerned with, its wether it moving backwards and not towards morning means that she is actually moving away from sleeping thru rather than towards it.

[Jo-FrasersMum]

Hi there

I think it's still too early to move towards a 4 hr routine.  To me it seems like perhaps your DD is shifting her long stretch of sleep to a different time.  Have you tried offering the dreamfeed?  That might help you regulate when the long stretch of sleep is.  Remember if you try the dreamfeed you need to give it at least a couple of nights to see if it will work for your DD.

Good luck
Jo

[erinsmum36]

thanks - so, should I only start moving towards the 4 hour routine once  LO turns 4 months? The wakeups are now shifting towards 3am so who knows whats happening! Last night she slept right through from 7pm to 6:40am.. she had a bad afternoon and missed both the cat nap and the full nap around 2 - bad trapped wind I think so yelled lots instead! Feeds went a bit weird too so i think she ended up having more than a standard day (although she does eat well and is putting weight on satisfactorily) so not sure if the extra calories or the reduction in daytime sleep got her through the night. Normally she has a 1 1/4 hr or 1 1/2 hour nap in every 3 hour cycle.. could she be getting too much sleep? She shows signs of tiredness, but the afternoon naps are getting to be a bit of a struggle in terms of keeping her asleep for more than 40 mins..

[Jo-FrasersMum]

Hi again

Yep, I would start to move to the 4 hr routine when DD is about 4 months.  I remember when we started the shift my LO couldn't quite do long enough A times so the routine was a little wacky for a while until he could stretch out a little longer.

Your DD is still very little - I don't think she would be getting too much sleep during the day.  You could have a look on the posts about average sleep times by age group, or sample EASY routines by age group - to see what other babies DD's age are doing.  From memory (it's a long time ago for me and my memory of DS at 11 weeks is pretty hazy lol) I think your DD's A/S cycles are pretty normal.

HTH and good luck
Jo