Our overseas trip trigger night wakings???

[Vanness]

Hello all,

My hubby and I desperately need some help (and sleep)! My LO is 5 months old, and he was starting to sleep through when he was 3 and 1/2 months old. Last month, my father passed away and we had to rushed back to Hong Kong for the funeral. It was 3 weeks ago when we went. The hong Kong time was only 2 hours behind, so we didn't have any problems keeping the same 4 hours EASY routine. However, the problem starts when we returned home last Sunday. My LO has been waking up 3-4 times every night since we got back. I know it's nothing to do with hunger. Because he will cry and when we walked in he smiles right away (same as he wakes in the morning). What should we do? I am so depressed, my father has passed away and i thought we are doing the right thing to attend the funeral. Now i ended up with sleepless nights. Sometimes, it's just too much to handle....

How old? 5 months
Bottle feed
Routine: 4 hours EASY
Wake up 7am
E 7.15
A 7.30-9.30
S 9.30-10.15
E 11
A 11.15-12.45
S 12.45-2
E 2.15
A 2.30-4
S 4-4.30
Bath 6.45
Eat 6.55
Sleep 7/7.15

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
V

[linfran]

Don't you just love it when they do that "cry and smile" thing at you?!  Guess it lets you know who's boss!!!!  It's possible the travel and the change of routine it entails could have caused unsettling - my cousin (who has to travel from South Korea to family events in the UK and Japan) has told me that she has found this, even though some flights are a couple of hours it's the actual travel that her kids find strange.

 Anyway, my lo went through a phase of waking for no apparent reason - I ended up going over to him in his crib , making sure there was nothing actually wrong, and then reaching in to pat and soothe him and offer a dummy but I tried not to make eye contact or get too chatty because if I did he thought it was ok to get up and play which is not what you want at 3am!  Once he quietened down I would move away and it sometimes took a few times over as long as an hour to get the hint that I wasn't going to play after all!  It took several nights of this but eventually he settled.

Just a thought, but is his room dark enough so he knows it's nighttime?  I found a blackout blind really helped.

I'm sorry to read about your dad but I hope that you are able to take the time to look after yourself and take the breaks when you can get them.

Good luck!