Night Wakings and Short Naps

[shoequeen]

My LO is 11 weeks old and sleep is a real issue for us.  He rarely naps during the day - if he does it's for 30 mins max.  Then, during the night we are up on average of 8 times per night.  He is totally formula fed and we always swaddle him to sleep as he wakes himself up by hitting himself in the face or losing his dummy. 

Here is our schedule:-

7:00    Morning feed 5/6oz

After this feed he goes on his playmat and we put him down when he shows signs of tiredness, but it's always before 9:00.   
He naps for max of 30 mins. He is then awake from this time until his next feed.

10:30  Feed 5/6oz

He frequently falls asleep on the bottle at this feed.  Probably because he is so tired from lack of slep! Again, after this feed we have activity and when he shows signs of tiredness he goes down.   The max he will sleep for at this time is 60 mins.

14:00 / 14:30 Feed 5/6oz

Activity afterwards and then I go for a walk with him in the pram. Sleeps for max 30/45 mins.

18:00   Bath

18:30  Feed 5/6oz

By the time we feed him at 18:30 he is very tired and cries before sleeping.    He sleeps well from this time until his dream feed.

22:30 / 23:00  Dream Feed

He takes approx. 4oz at this feed.  We keep him swaddled.  He will then sleep through until approx. 02:00.  Then the night time fun and games starts.  When he first wakes I put his dummy back in and he goes off for another hour.  After this time we are up every half hour replacing the dummy.  We have tried feeding him but he only takes 2oz max. and then doesn't want feeding at the 07:00 feed.

Do you think he is getting enough food during the day?  Should we still try to feed him when he wakes at night?  Should we try to stop using the dummy?   He rarely cries for food and doesn't seem that interested when we feed him.  We sometime struggle to get him to eat more than 3oz.  And like I said above, he frequently falls asleep on the bottle. 

Any help / advice would be greatly appreciated as we are soooo tired and really need to get some quality sleep time for our LO and ourselves.

[texasmom]

Hi there!  Congratulations on your little one! 

It sounds like his short naps might be caused by being overtired.  Have you tried shortening his awake time?  I definitely notice that my LO takes a 30 min nap when he is overtired. 

Also, I have found that my LO wakes at night when he is overtired during the day.  I would try doing whatever I could to get some good sleep in during the day, especially naps longer than an hour - it is more restful.  I had to shh/pat to get mine to sleep longer at times. 

Have you ever tracked the total number of hours he sleeps per day?  I started doing that, figured out what he needed for a good day, and then worked towards getting that. 

I definitely wouldn't feed him at night, unless you know he's hungry.  That will just encourage him to wake more to eat b/c he'll eat less during the day. 

If you think you could wean the paci, you might try that.  It sounds like it could be a prop.  He's young, though.  I don't know for sure on that. 

I also thought that he would eat more at his feedings if he were more alert.  I'm sure you have thought of that!      

Is there a reason you have him on a 3 1/2 hour feeding schedule rather than a 3?  Not that it's bad; I was just curious.  It sounds like he is doing well taking the dream feed and really not needing another feed till morning, so it's fine, I'm sure. 

I wanted to share with you an experience I had.  I don't give a dream feed b/c I think it makes my LO wake more at night, but for a while, I also didn't feed him at all during the night (a couple of nights in a row, he'd wake, we'd give paci, go make a bottle, and by the time we were back, he was asleep, so we thought he didn't need to eat).  What happened was that he started every hour, we'd give the paci, and he'd go back to sleep.  But that is brutal!  No sleep for us!  One night I decided to feed him just to see what would happen, and he ate 8 ounces and slept the rest of the night.  I don't necessarily think yours is waking due to hunger.  I just share that with you so that you can keep a couple of things in mind.  One is the dream feed - I've talked to other people who have said that the dream feed made their LO wake more.  I also just wanted you to consider that hunger CAN cause a LO to wake, but it's not always the cause.  Tracy says habitual waking is not due to hunger, but random wakings can be.     

I really think the most important thing is to get him to bed after a well rested day. 

I promise it will get better. 

Hope something I said helps. 

Hugs to you.

Brooke

[Caroline-Charlies Mummy]

With regards to the naps, I agree with the pp that you are trying for too long A (activity) time. At this age, there is still not much A time between the end of the feed and the next nap (the A time even includes the feed). Especially as it seems he is overtired, you should maybe try - waking up, feed, nappy change, 10 mins on playmat, and then attempt at a nap again, even if h'es not giving tired signs. It will seem for a time that you are doing nothing but putting him down for a sleep, but this period will pass.

Why not pop over to the Naps forum? We can try and help you, and can offer lots of support