My LO is 25 weeks old. The last 3 weeks his night sleep has been awful. His naps have been great, for the most part. It all started 3 weeks ago with him fighting going to bed. I'd be able to get him down, like usual. But then 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes later he'd wake up CRYING really really hard. Like he was in pain. I thought it was his reflux acting up, perhaps, because he was also doing a lot of back arching in his lseep and while awake. He'd also kick out and flail his whole little body, often whle still asleep. If I could keep hold of him, he'd stay asleep.
4 days ago, we dropped the catnap and shortened his daytime naps from 4.5 hours to 3-3.5 hours. For 3 nights, he went to bed GREAT! It was wonderful! He also slept through the night like normal, no wakings! I thought maybe THAT'S what the problem was - we needed to drop the cat nap. However, on the 3rd day I fed him 3 tsp of oatmeal instead of the 1tsp he's used to because he'd gotten his appetite back after it being gone for 2 weeks (another reason I thought reflux was the culprit). Well, since then, he' been a mess. Naps are starting to go to crap because he wakes up with horrible gas pains. And last night he woke up every hour, and then at 3 am and I couldn't get him back to sleep until 6 (I tried feeding, but he only took 2 oz). When I finally got him back to sleep (I laid him in bed with me, the first time EVER in his life), I noticed he was constantly kicking his feet out. Like maybe it WAS gas. Also, right before I got him to sleep, he let out a few toots, and that seemed to help him relax a little bit.
Can someone please advise? Do you think these sleep problems are still related to my routine? Or is it possible that it is something like gas or reflux? He's also teething, but I gave him Tylenol before bed last night, just to make sure he wouldn't be uncomfortable. None of his wakings seemed to be teeth related. He wasn't pulling at his mouth, and he wasn't crying, just back arching, kicking, and at 3 am wide awake.
Here's yesterday's routine:
7:30 Awake
E 8:00
A 8:30-9:45
S 9:45-11:45
E 12:00
A 12:30-14:00
S 14:00-16:00 (but with a waking at 14:30, and didn't get solidly back to sleep until 15:10) Total nap time: 1hr20
E 16:30
A 17:00-17:30
17:30 began wind down for bed
E 18:00
finish wind down, and in bed by 18:30
3 brief wakings, all taken care of in less than 2 minutes
Dream feed 22:30
woke at midnight 1 am, 2 am, and then at 3 am- 6am.