Is it something I do?

[cakeandcustard]

Hi, I'm hoping someone can give me some pointers/reassurance. Bit of backstory DS2 was an appalling sleeper, woke every couple of hours til about 7 or 8 months & I'm desperate for the same thing not to happen with DD1 (13weeks).

At the moment we have a bedtime routine, she takes about 4oz from a bottle at 6pm, bath, pjs and is ready for bed at 7.30. She has a final breastfeed and I put her down in her room, in a bedside cot awake. She falls asleep with me lying next to her, we're happy with this.

Then it all goes tits up. She has occasionally slept through til 2am - this is a very good night. More often than not she wakes at 10/11 then 1/2 and anytime afterr that. She is verry restless, she tosses & turns & grunts aand shouts in her sleep, I 'm lying in bed next to the cot and am awake even if she's not.

I've been settling her with a dummy rather than bf her to sleep but she still feeds at least twice a night. I had an idea that I was disturbing her in the night so went to bed in my own bed last night but she still had me up two hours later. She doesn't seem to self settle without the dummy, is there anything I can do about this?

I need your votes - is it me interferring trying to get her to settle, using the dummy, so I can sleep thats the problem (and if so how do I break the habit?
Or do I resign myself to another non- sleeping baby, carry on cosleeping & do whatever gets us through the night?

[ColdTeaAgain]

At this stage I would cosleep, even better as you're breastfeeding as you can do the night feeds practically in your sleep!

Personally I don't see any problem with feeding a baby to sleep, especially one so young.
Every time they hit a developmental leap, it all changes. A loose routine to work around is good but ultimately be led by your baby and it's less stressful all round.

[WeeClype]

Could you bath and feed her later?

I have a 4 month old, if I were to put her to bed early then she'd be up all night. I don't have any set routine, I keep her in the living room with me until I go to bed and give her a bottle even if she's not due a feed but I know that once she's been put in her basket she'll sleep until 9am.

[cakeandcustard]

We used to keep her downstairs with us but she started to fall asleep earlier & earlier, she's definitely ready for bed by 7.30 - 8ish. Shes up at 6.30 - 7am as everyone needs to be up and out the door for the school run. We introduced the teatime bottle to try & fill her up for bed & I feed her myself even though shes not hungry as such to try and top her up for bedtime. I just need her not to wake so frequently, I always thought with DS2 it wasn't a problem how I settled him it was just I had to do it so bloody often!

[mycatlikestwiglets]

She may be hungry, she's still very young. My EBF DD is 5mo and still needs to feed every three hours though the night (it's killing me). Needing to suck to settle could indicate hunger, especially as you say she can self settle initially.

Fwiw I don't believe it's you - my DS is and always was an amazing sleeper (doing 12 hours straight from about 10wo) but DD is the opposite. I'm not doing anything differently. Sadly some babies just don't sleep well until later.

[ch1134]

This doesn't sound too bad to me! 7.30 til 2am and she's only 13 weeks... give her time and she might start to go longer on her won. Try not to be influenced by what your son did.

[GeorgieJo]

OP can I hijack your thread and ask how your son eventually started sleeping longer stretches? My 5.5 month old DS1 occasionally gives us a 4 - 5 hour stretch, but most nights he wakes every 2 - 3 hours.

No idea what to do since he self settles at bedtime. How did you crack it?

(I am already thinking about what I would do differently for DC2...)

[PansOnFire]

Not sure about the question re. the dummy as my DS has always had one and although I tried to stop him from using it it made the nights more disrupted so I just persevered. It was brilliant when he could pop it back in on his own and I think it's saved us a few restless nights. So IMO I'd keep it but then that won't help you now, sorry.

Is it possible for you to dream feed her before she actually wakes up for a feed? If I remember correctly this is what I did for the 11/12ish feed. I formula fed so I know it's slightly different but maybe if you dream fed her for this feed with a bottle then this might break the breastfeeding for comfort in the night, the bottle teat might be so similar to the dummy that the dummy will do, perhaps? Just an idea though.

[PansOnFire]

GeorgieJo is your DS wanting milk when he wakes in the night? What do you do at the moment when he wakes up?

[GeorgieJo]

Thank you Pans - my DS has one feed between 10pm and 1am (depending on when he wakes) and but other than that he usually just needs help to get back to sleep - repositioning, shush-patting or sometimes a snuggle. From 5am it is harder to convince him to go back to sleep so he often needs rocking for 15 -20 minutes.

When he wakes and cries I try to leave it for a minute to see if he will self-settle (sometimes happens but rarely).

Cake was that what it was like with your DS2? How did you convince him to stay asleep??

[ShatterResistant]

I did a dream feed until DD was 6 months, at around 10, just before I went to bed. I always felt that enabled her to sleep for a longer stretch during my night time, iyswim. Her wakings were probably at a similar interval to yours, but enabled me to sleep longer at one go.

[PansOnFire]

GeorgieJo I wonder if giving him a dream feed before he wakes might work for you? What worked for us was making sure that he'd had the right amount of feeds during the day (formula fed) and then a top up as a dream feed before he woke up wanting food. Any other night wakings were dealt with as you've said you already deal with them, I'd avoid picking him up and give him plenty of time to self soothe if he wasn't crying.

The other thing that helps is making sure their routine during the day covers all required sleep and no more, I used The Contented Book of Sleep which really helped to keep his routine right for him when he went through a growth spurt or developmental stage. The Wonder Weeks is also a great app (and book which I haven't read the whole of!) as it explains the difficult weeks and helps you deal with them.

I'm sure you've heard most of this before but it's what worked for us :). Between 5 and 8 months have been the hardest for us, at 16 months he's just heading into another difficult stage...

Good luck :)

[cakeandcustard]

Georgiejo sorry I don't have any magic solutions, we coslept and he eventually grew out of it. To break the cosleeping habit I did the gradual withdrawal but he was still regularly climbing into bed with us age 3. Thats why I'm so keen to try and get this one right.

Last night was appalling she went to bed at 7.45, was up at 9.30, 12.30 2am and then 3.30 after that I got DH to sleep in with her so I could get some kip in the next room - I could cry

[GeorgieJo]

cake I am so sorry that sounds horrendous. Glad your DH took over and hope you get some decent naps today.