11 week old- change in sleep! (Day and night)

[Mrsyorkie]

From the very early weeks my DS was hit and miss with his sleep in the night... no night was ever the same, sometimes up every half and hour other times 1 hour here, 2 hour there. I know to expect that so I'm not worried. However, we've always been so lucky in that he goes down at around 7 and slept through to around 10pm, I would usually feed him to sleep. After that we would have the regular wakenings. However, since last week (10weeks) he will go down at 7ish and be really hard to put down. Fussing, not feeding but not settling. He has a dummy for naps and in the car but never needed this to go down for the night. I've been needing to use it to get him settled at night, more recently. The things I usually try is holding him so he's faced into my chest and either swaying or rocking and shushing. Sometimes white noise. He can become really hysterical with his crying. When he's down he will sleep for 45 minutes at the most and then wake up. Recently he doesn't even seem to come around... He just screeches. He's been doing this until his 10pm feed and then will sleep until 1 or 2am usually.

Another thing, I really struggled to get him into a routine with napping but we finally cracked it and id swaddle him, put his dummy in, he would cry for 5 or 10 minutes whilst I held and shushed him and then settle to sleep. He's ALWAYS cried when going for a nap, i think it's just what he does and will settle quickly, I usually put him down as soon as I see tired signs and never later than 2 hours awake (usually after 1.5 hours) he just seems to be more hysterical though now and harder to settle. He won't nap longer than 45 mins whereas before he'd have one nap of 2 hours.

We recently went away for the weekend and he slept in a travel cot at my mums. He slept the BEST he's ever slept so when we got home we tried him in the cot (11 weeks... i know it's early) we left the doors open, video monitor and I even slept in there one night. However, my husband read about the sleep positioners in the news and there was a lot about SIDS which terrified him the more he read... So DS is back in our room in the moses basket! We're going to buy a travel cot for our room this weekend in case he needs more room. I just feel that we started to do so well after a lot of persistence and we've gone back again. Has anyone else experience the same? Ps I know about the 45 min sleep transition but I just don't know what to do about it!

[FATEdestiny]

I would suggest the proper cot in your room, even if that means moving a chest of drawers out to fit it in. The Moses basket becomes restrictive to sleep as they get older. And the problem with travel cots is that the mattress is so low down, whereas most wooden cots can have raised mattress heights.

Sleep does change at around this age, don't worry about the fact it's changed.

If baby is harder to get down, reduce awake time. I would suggest something like 60-90m awake time.

I wouodcalso use the dumny more consistantly for every sleep time.

[Mrsyorkie]

Thank you for replying FATE. Tonight he's gone down really well but I think it's probably due to being really tired! We really battled during the last nap which turned out to be very short. Will definitely aim to keep awake time shorter, we dont usually go past 1.5 hours. First nap of the nap is usually after an hour of being awake. I think i was more worried he wasn't awake long enough! I'm more worried about him not napping enough through the day.