14 week old nightmare at bed time!

[Busybee100]

My DD is now 14 weeks old, she sleeps through the night and is generally a good baby through the day.however come bed time she becomes the absolute devil! We used to cuddle her to sleep but then she started getting very frustrated and so did we so we began putting her to bed awake and trying to let her put herself to sleep, for about a week or soo this seemed to work she would cry for about 20 mins with us going in ever 5 mins to put he dummy in and then eventually she would go to sleep.niw bed time is an absolute screaming match for about 1 to 2 hours! Even if I do pick her up and cuddled her. She won't even take her dummy and she used to live it, she just screams so much that she won't even sook it. Some one please help me!! It's making me so upset and driving me mad!!

She is a very small baby, you are expecting too much! It is the time of day when they are often crabby. You are doing amazingly well if she sleeps through the night! Have a later bedtime.

I agree with exotic - she's far too young to have a proper bedtime. At this stage you do whatever works for her, and what you're doing now clearly isn't working for her. You say it's making you upset and driving you mad - it's making her upset and driving her mad. She's doing her best to tell you this isn't the way she wants to be put to sleep. You need to try something else - I'd say she needs a lot of reassurance at going-to-sleep time, whenever that is. Also she may be building up to the 16 week growth spurt and be hungry.

Also calling her 'good' or 'the devil' at this stage is counterproductive. At this age she is nothing but a perfectly normal baby.

I dont think 14 weeks is too young for a bedtime. When you say she is 'sleeping through the night' what do you mean by that? Do you mean 7 to 7 or 12 till 5... people define it vastly differently. I have a 15 week old and a few weeks ago because of what you describe we resorted to putting her to bed as early as 5.30 . That way she was not over tired and the effect on early waking was surpridingly not that noticeable. The key I think is getting them to kip more in the day and have a proper nap, which we are now starting to achieve, therefore pushing bedtime back a bit.

We started puting her down early because that was the time se tented to want to go to sleep before, tried her later tonight and it was much better. But the crabbiness made me think she was tiered at that time. If she goes to sleep at 7 that's her till half 7 in the morning with a 3oz dream feed at ten. If we keep her up past about half seven she is so crabby and I feel this is because she is shattered but won't go to sleep

How many naps is she having during the day? At this age I'd be expecting her to have a nap (anywhere from 40 minutes to 90) every hour-and-a-half/ couple of hours. You might find that the evening is easier if she has a nap at 5ish for half an hour.

Sometimes she naps a lot during the day and I find she is better at night if she has had plenty of good naps but she is also very hard to get to sleep during the day. She becomes so grumpy because she is tiered but will not go to sleep, however sometimes she is brilliant and has 2 big naps in th morning and about 2 big naps in the afternoon varying from 40 mins to 2 hours

I think erratic sleep during the day is normal but like Octavia think its important in this. Doesnt make it easy though. My LO is 16 weeks today and fingers crossed is stopping the night screams. Its a phase..... and night time sleeping is good which bodes well :-)

Thanks :) in hoping it will pass! :)

She sounds hungry. 14 weeks is classic growth spurt time. Agree that your expectations of a very young baby are high. Her crying for hours at a time is her trying to tell you something and you are not listening.