Why is ds waking up every 2 hours at 16 weeks?

[LemonBarley]

Help! Back in early December ds would sleep 5 or 6 hours straight with one wake-up for a feed then another 3 hours or so. This is now a distant memory.

Over Christmas/New Year he woke up every 60-90 mins and breast fed 2-hourly during the day - we were visiting relatives so I put it down to that plus 3 month growth spurt. But now the holiday season is over he is still waking every 2 hours in the night and is almost 4 months. Not feeding as often during the day although I'm trying to get food down his neck in case that helps, he does not seem short of food. In the night he is not sleeping that well - tossing and whimpering in his sleep.

There are so many variables to tweak that I don't know where to start. He is still swaddled although he doesn't like it - but he wakes up from twitching his arms otherwise. Is he too hot/constricted? Am trying my best to get temperature right... Oh, and he falls asleep quickly from exhaustion every night at 7.30, then wakes up after half an hour and takes a further 90 min or more to go back to sleep again which knocks out our evenings. Generally feeds to sleep, but it doesn't always work and can be hard to get him to sleep any other way. He has just in the last few days (finally!!) started daytime napping in his buggy, I leave him to cry a little for that when he is very tired which works, but don't do so at night as yet as am worried he might start to be scared of his cot. Haven't particularly noticed the daytime naps affecting the (terrible) night time sleep. Also he has only been in the cot for about a week (was in moses basket) but again we have noticed little change in sleep patterns.

A final thought - this entire episode coincides with his BCG jab swelling up. Last week that was definitely making him ill with a high temperature and we even went to A&E, he got better when a load of pus came out. But it's still swollen. Doctors say this does not make them ill but clearly that wasn't true last week, could it be affecting sleep???

Anyone had anything like this? Dh is talking about some kind of hardline sleep training, which sounds like a bad idea to me as I am sure there is something wrong. Any help appreciated! Very, very short of sleep so brain not working too well.

4 month sleep regression. Normal.

Support thread here

Info here

I'm told it gets better.

Oh, and far too early for sleep training. 6mths+ for that.

4 month sleep regression.

DS slept 8 hours from 11-17 weeks and then started waking every 90 mins - 2 hours.

It will settle down again, but I wouldn't do any sleep training at such a young age.

It could be teeth too.

The only thing that sounds "wrong" to me is "he falls asleep quickly from exhaustion every night at 7.30," when my kids are overtired they often wake up later in the night in a bad mood. I'd bring bedtime forward to when he's not exhausted.

DS woke up two-hourly through to about seven months, when we night-weaned. Sounds normal rather than anything wrong.

Thank you all for your messages, and thanks ethelina for the links. As this all started at 3 months I am not sure if it was 4-month regression then, but perhaps it is now and it all segued seamlessly??

'From exhaustion' at 7.30pm was shorthand. We do a big feed (formula, the only ff of the day), a bath at 6ish and a bit of massage then spend a bit of quiet time. When he starts to fuss a little I breastfeed him, he looks happy and falls deeply asleep almost immediately without going through the normal twitching, REM etc. I think this has become a routine for him and unfortunately it seems to be a routine that leads to a 30 minute nap rather than a night-time sleep! Going to bed earlier might work if he falls asleep at an earlier point but I'm not sure if he will, this is a good example of how it's not helpful to be reliant on feed-to-sleep.

Re sleep training, I think ds would welcome a little more routine and learning to settle himself using more ways than just feeding and I am trying to work out how to do this, I'd be surprised if that was controversial at 4 months? But I wouldn't agree with doing things like refusing to feed him at night when he asks for it which is what dh is muttering about. I'm sure ds doesn't really want to be up every 2 hours either

Am full of admiration for you all for sticking it out for so long. I really think that my personal solution is going to have to involve me getting some more sleep soon, which in turn is going to have to involve somebody who isn't me giving him a bit more formula than he gets at the moment. That's probably the topic for a whole other thread though...

Does sound like the 4 month sleep regression.

There is a great book explaining it called The Wonder Weeks by two scientists who researched all the developmental spurts up to 18 months.

They say "Your baby may not settle down well at night now. It may be more difficult to get her to bed in the evenings, or she may lie awake at night. She may want a night feeding again, or she may even demand to be fed several times a night. She may also wake up much earlier in the morning."

They also say: "The fussy period preceding the developmental spurt will often last 5 weeks, although it may be as short as 1 week or as long as 6."

The good news is that is passes on its own.

There?s useful infohere, here, here and here.

Sleep training of any kind is least likely to be successful during a sleep regression period. Many babies who can self-settle still wake, maybe every 2 hours, when they're in a sleep regeression.

Sleep training is not advised before 6 months because it can lead to babies not letting you know when they genuinely need to be fed at night. Up till 6 months you can't guarantee that this won't have an adverse effect on their health.

This aside, making a 4 month old cry for hours to teach them to 'settle themselves' is certainly would be controversial.

The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley has some good ideas for helping babies sleep better without leaving them to scream.

HTH

Hi

My son did exactly the same. Slept 10 til 5 or so from 10 to 18 weeks, then started waking up to six times a night. I tried getting him to sleep more in the day, less in the day, more boob, more formula, etc etc, even keeping a log of exactly what he ate and when he napped to try and replicate any day that might have made him sleep through.

I didn't do any 'sleep training' on him, other than leaving him having a whimper for a minute or so until he found his dummy in his mouth again.

This went on for three months. Then one night he slept through, and has done ever since. He's now 18 months and is a great sleeper. [touch wood emoticon]

Just a quick note for anyone who reads this in the future (I sometimes find myself reading old threads for info, maybe I'm not alone, and I'd want this one to include what actually worked!)

1 - I wrote the original post at a time when I was desperate with sleep deprivation, it was a very tough time. If you are in a similar situation then you have my sympathy as I found that people forget/don't understand how hard it is to keep going when you feel so awful.

2 - Of all the places I turned to for help, the most useful was my local Sure Start Children's Centre. I didn't realise it but they have a Family Support service specifically to help parents with problems in the early stages. They came round to my flat and gave me good advice, then kept an eye on me and checked up on how things were going.

3 - Re the specific problem I posted about, things did get better. We fixed the problem of Ds waking up 45 minutes after bedtime by moving his wake-up time to 7am from 8.30am (waking him 30 minutes earlier every day or 2) and fitting in a third nap at around 4.30pm, I think he had got into the habit of treating bedtime as a nap. Night-time sleeping was tougher to resolve but it did improve over time, one thing that definitely helped was having a more structured daytime routine. Another was (sometimes) letting him cry a little at night when he was obviously not hungry/thirsty or in discomfort to break the habit of constant feeding, this helped him develop some self-settling skills too.

Between now and then we have gone through all sorts of different phases including a night when he slept 8 hours! Currently he wakes 3 times to feed but has been through periods when he woke twice or even once. We strongly suspect he doesn't need to feed at night now he is on solids, so we are once again considering sleep training but this time with a lot more care and thought. It's a very different situation now from what it was then, things really do change very fast although you can seem so stuck at the time.

Good luck.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that for the transition from swaddling we found a Peke Moe very useful. www.pekemoe.co.nz/

Ds has just graduated from that into a normal baby sleeping bag, he has spent about 3 months in a Peke Moe in the meantime and for us that worked really well.

Thanks for updating and glad you've seen progress. :) Lots of babies do struggle at night when they don't nap often enough during the day.

Just in case anyone else has a similar problem, I thought I'd mention that waking after 45 mins at bedtime can also be due to the sleep regression (that was the case for DS anyway).

On the night feeding thing, my DS needs night feeds still and he's been on solids for 10 months now. Usually it's because he has wind or his teeth hurt, or he's overtired, but I wouldn't assume that being on solids necessarily means babies don't need night feeds. A FF'ing friend's 17 m.o. was night weaned at 6 months and still needs a bottle of water in the middle of the night every night.