why night waking - milestone or separation anxiety?

[arial]

Hi.  I have LO who is 15 weeks old and turning 16 weeks old tomorrow, no quite 4 months by dates.  He was doing quite good last week because he would only get up once at night every other day and he was sleeping until 6 AM.  In the past 3 days, he has been waking up at 5 AM and after trying unsuccessfully to put him back to sleep, we just turn on the lights at 6AM and start his day.  Last night he got up at 9:30PM and 2:30AM.  At 9:30PM, we just treated as he getting hungry before his dreamfeeding at 10PM, so we fed him. (now bear in mind that he never gets up at this hour to eat, we usually have to wake him up - I just assumed he was hungry because his bedtime bottle consisted of 4 oz of breastmilk when he normally should take 6.5 - now my LO has been very inconsistent in drinking my breastmilk, sometime he finishes his bottles and others he barely drinks 3 oz out of it - but that is another issue and I have posted in breastfeeding section)I could here him fussing and making all sorts of noises and I know that he was trying to sooth himself and put himself back to sleep.  He started to get louder by 3AM so I went into the room.  We initially thought it was hunger so I prepared a bottle while my DH held him.  His crying got louder and louder when he was held by DH.  He did not quite down until I held him and in a few minutes (while waiting for formula to be ready), he fell asleep.  Now, I suspect that it is not hunger because I have increased his intake recently by considerable amount (and technically he drunk all his bottles yesterday - last bottle had to be given in two different times because his 4 hour EASY got messed up after he got up yesterday at 5AM and was hungry) and I even fed him extra during his dreamfeeding at 9:30PM (he got 7.5oz of formula).

Now, my questions is this: is there any milestones at this time of his age? 

Also, I just went back to work (part-time) last week and he did fine with my parents.  Yesterday, my mom said that he did not want anything to do with them and that he seemed to be looking for me.  She also noticed that he was much happier when I came home from work.  The other thing that I found interesting is that he calmed down right away, he I held him last night (he has never done that at night).  Is there such a thing as separation anxiety at this age?   I thought it came later. 

Ahh, another question that interested me is how often do LO go through growth spurs? 

Thanks

[Jo-FrasersMum]

Hi there

I would think it is probably a little early for separation anxiety.  Does your LO roll over yet?  And yes, could well be a growth spurt.  Did your LO have one at 3 months?  They are *reasonably* predictably but all babies are different.

HTH
Jo

[Colin Macs Mom]

Some LOs start trying to roll around 4 mo. so you might have that going on. It's definitely early for sep. anx, but if you just went back to work then he surely is aware that things are different and he's with different people. It will take him a bit of time to adjust to that, but he will. Just make sure that you give him lots of love and reassurance, and tell him what's happening. "Ok honey, grandma and grandpa will be here soon to play with you today while mommy goes to work..." that sort of thing.

As for growth spurts, LOs have huge ones at 3 month intervals (3, 6, 9, etc) but they can have smaller ones in between, and those depend on the LO. You might be having one... hard to say though.

[arial]

Thanks for your thoughts.  Just an update:  my LO has been getting up at different times of the night.  I have not seen a pattern.  Last night he got up 4 times (it has never happened).  I always go in there and reassured him that I am here.  Well, I will see how he does over the weekend when I do not have to go to work.

[arial]

I am actually totally embarrassed since I know better after reading Tracy's book- I am currently using lots of props. 

You see, I have weaned my baby off the paci one month ago.  At the time of the process, we had started using shush/pat but he seem more annoying by the shush than anything so we had only pat.  With time, even the pat seemed not to have any effect so we stopped.  During the process of weaning, since we were also teaching him to sleep in the crib, we were putting him drowsy but awake in the crib.  Between the stress of not having his paci and learning to fall asleep in bed on his own, I noticed that he started to develop crib phobia.  That is when I started to hold him and rock him a bit (someone suggested in the post) - it did work.  The problem is that now he is having a harder time falling asleep and it takes me long time, sometimes rocking for an hour in my arms before he actually falls asleep (he is also a 3 month old who weights almost 17 lb), so you can imagine that my arms are about to fall out by the end of the routine.  I do have a bedtime routine: bath, eating and sleeping.  Lately, since I have gone back to work - he resist sleeping more than before.  So when I get home in the afternoon, sometimes he is overtired and when I put him to sleep he sleeps over his bedtime.  I have woken him up and do the bedtime routine, but then he is so sleepy that he wants to sleep and not eat.  He fights me so I have to put him to sleep and then feed him semi-sleep so that at least he goes to bed with a meal in his belly.

I know you are wondering why I do not do something about the rocking.  I want to eliminate it.  I have made several attempts to put him awake in the crib, he cries each time really badly.  Since I have gone back to work, it is hard to work on anything since I know that my parents will do what they want.  They do not have the Patience that it's needed for it to work.

Well, in regards to his waking.  This weekend, he did better since on Saturday night, he got up at 2AM but when back to sleep after whimpering for a while.  He woke up at 4:30AM.  Last night, he did not wake up until 4:30AM.  His waking up time is actually 6AM, now I do not know how to extend it.  I am still trying to figure out if this habitual waking so that I can use wake to sleep.

Thanks