questions about shush pat and sleep regression.

[Naomip88]

Sorry for the rambling post! My dd is 18 weeks old and experiencing what I think is sleep regression. For the last month (after the newborn chaos!) her sleep has been pretty great really she would have a bath, feed (she's now ff ) and after a bit of wind and some soothing (carrying around) and shushing would usually settle quite well sleep downstairs with us till about 11/12 when my partner would bring her upstairs for a dream feed and most nights she would sleep from this feed till 6.00/6.30 , she was also pretty good at napping. For the last 3 weeks we had just started putting her down upstairs after her bath as she was getting disturbed by us downstairs and things got even better, we would feed her to sleep and she would maybe wake up once and just have the dummy put back in and settle herself But for the last weeks things have got quite a lot worse, she now falls asleep after a bath and bottle for about an 45 minutes - 1 hour and then wakes up very upset and needs to be soothed back to sleep, this takes a while (20 minutes or more) and then the same thing happens, she seems in turn very tired and upset and then really awake as soon as she's put in the cot. This usually goes on on and off for 2 -3 hours, she sleeps well for the rest of the night ( 1 dream feed) but also fights sleep during naps.

I've tried implementing more a routine regarding feed times and nap times, we've brought her bedtime forward a bit and don't let her nap past 4.30 and I'm trying to stop feeding her to sleep as I think that was contributing to wind but things haven't really changed. With naps I've been trying to put her down upstairs at least once but she naps mostly in the pram and I have been encouraging this as thats when she's sleeps the longest and if i don't do this she'll be a lot more tired and grouchy by bedtime!
So.......... I've got some questions! should I just try and ride this out and do whatever works to get her to sleep? Will she get worse if I don't tackle this now or could this just be a phase if she was previously a good sleeper? Also if I try the shush pat technique do I have to do this for bedtime and naps or is it better to tackle one thing at a time? Her bedtime went pear shaped as soon as I said to my childless friends ''Her sleep seems to be sorted now so you should come round for dinner'' Serves me right for being so pleased with myself :-)

[FATEdestiny]

This age is an age of lots of new physical and mental developments - learning about hands, discovering feet, rolling, holding stuff and so on and so on. I am guessing your DD is doing some of these?

Have you increased the amount of milk she has over 24 hours recently? All of these extra skills require extra calories.

I found with my DD that she would never take any more formula per feed, that stayed the same. But if I fed her more frequently she would have an extra one or two whole bottles per day - which is quite a bit of extra milk. My DDs milk intake went up by 25% at around 4 months.

I honestly believe that most sleep issues that cannot be solved with a dummy are down to feeding issues or over-tired. Your DD might have a bit of both. Feeding more frequently in the daytime may solve both.

I am a huge routine fan. At this age I would be giving a full bottle every 2h to 2.5h through the daytime. She's also be having one sleep in every 2h to 2.5h too.

[FATEdestiny]

I forgot to answer your specific questions

should I just try and ride this out and do whatever works to get her to sleep?

I believe that concept of a "phase" or "regression" gives the wrong impression. It suggests that if you change nothing and carry on, everything will go back to normal. I disagree. It won't. What you were doing doesn't work now, so you will need to do something new. I'd suggest feeding more frequently through the daytime.

Will she get worse if I don't tackle this now or could this just be a phase if she was previously a good sleeper?

Feeding to sleep isn't ideal and I would be trying to reduce it. But nothing to stress too much about at this age. What I'd do to stop feeding to sleep is to life and wind baby after feeding to sleep. That slight jiggling helps them with getting used to not being asleep when going into the cot.

Also if I try the shush pat technique do I have to do this for bedtime and naps or is it better to tackle one thing at a time?

If you are doing any sleep training you need to be consistent for it to work, so naps and bedtime. I don't think you'll need to sleep train though.