Exhausted & struggling....

[lazzaroo]

dd2 is 15 weeks and her sleep is terrible. Always has been so it's not just a regression. I fully expect her to wake to feed but it's the fact that she won't settle between feeds. A typical night is...

6.30pm feed and then settled to sleep.
Often stirs after 45mins & needs resettling
Wakes around 10-11 for feed
Won't settle led in cot. Ends up in our bed.
Wakes around 1-2 for feed.
Won't settle just led in bed, has to be on me.
Lose track of subsequent wake ups!
Wakes at 5ish, won't feed back to sleep. Takes 30-40 mins of pacing to get her back to sleep for 40mins.

Dd1 does 2 days at pre-school but I can't catch up on sleep in the day as dd2 doesn't nap for longer than 40 mins. It doesn't even help if someone else has her as she is ebf and refuses a bottle so longest break I can get is 2 hours.

Do I just get used to it or does someone have an idea about how to improve things.

[BotBotticelli]

When she stirs in the evening, 45 minutes after you put her into her cot, does she wake up really screaming in distress, or is it more of a moany/grizzly cry??

As long as she doesn't sound upset, I would suggest maybe not rushing in to her straight away to re-settle her, but maybe wait in the living room for 4 mins listening on the monitor and see if she will go back off to sleep on her own.

I was very skeptical when we first tried this with DS at around 3 months old, but after a couple of days, it really worked! Now at 4mo, he stirs a couple of times in his cot between 7pm and 10pm, but always just drifts off to sleep on his own after a few minutes.

once we had 'taught' him this skill of self-settling in the early evening, we then tried the same thing in the wee small hours of the night (although it was perhaps easier for us as DS is FF and we knew he was not waking through hunger, cos we give him a massive bottle as a dreamfeed at 10pm which sees him through till breakfast). It doesn't always work in the middle of the night, sometimes we have to rub his tummy a bit, give him his dummy to get him back off to sleep, but the non-hungry night wakings have definitely decreased since he learned a bit how to self-settle. Might be worth a try?

[lazzaroo]

Thank you. I'm sure self settling could help. We have tended to go to her as we've been worried about her waking her sister. It probably wouldn't to be honest. She usually starts off grumbling but can escalate quickly! Also, she likes to suck her thumb/fingers for comfort (won't take a dummy) but she also rubs head & sometimes pulls her hair when tired. So we are torn at night between putting scratch mits on her to stop her hurting herself & letting her suck her thumb to help settling.