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Baby struggling to settle to sleep

6 replies

Munchkinmommy · 04/08/2012 10:08

Hi ladies. I seem to be on here a lot lately asking for advise! Hope to repay the favour to new moms when my LO is older :-)
My little girl has just turned 16 weeks. She has always been a great sleeper at night; we feed her about 7pm and she will sleep through to 7am. She does wake up but has always been able to get herself back off.
The struggle has always been the last feed. She is tired and hungry but is constantly rejecting the bottle. We eventually get about 100ml down her but it's a real battle. I think she is tired and so thought perhaps bringing her bed time routine forward (she has a bath about 6:30 currently) would help but that has proved impossible because of her feeding schedule.
Lately though she has started to cry when she goes for a nap and when I put her down at night.
Here is our typical day:
Wakes for feed around 7/7:30 am. Feed and then goes down for a nap at about 8/8:30 am.
Wake about 9:30/10 am
Play until 10:30/11.
Feed about 10:30/11
Then she we play until around 12:30/13:00, depending on what we are doing. She will fall asleep in the car or pram earlier.
Feed about 13:30
Play or we are out and about until about 16:00 when she will nap again. Feed at 4:30. Then play, cuddles, bath and bed at around 7pm.
She will only nap for 30 mins in the day after the first sleep but she does sleep 12 hours at night. She has about 180-200ml each feed apart from bed time.

Just wondering what your thoughts are. She had her jabs 3 days ago and the bed time crying started that night, she has cried before the day time naps for a few weeks.
Do you think it's the jabs? Teething? Could it be that I am not putting her to sleep early enough in the day so she is over tired? Is it the 4 month regression that I hear about? How would you advise I help her? Thanks ladies!

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
JiltedJohnsJulie · 04/08/2012 13:56

Well, it could be any one of those things. If you think it is the jabs or teethng, try giving her some ibruprofen and see if that helps.

Have you tried moving her naps to see if that helps, as you say she could just be overtired. There's a great article here on napping Smile.

Sprite21 · 04/08/2012 19:51

Hi, I just wanted to say that I am really impressed with your very detailed routine. DD is 10 months and I don't think I had any sense of a routine until 6 months. It's all gone to pot now anyways. Your day sounds pretty ideal so I don't mean to sound trite but what's the problem? If she is sleeping through 12 hours then maybe she doesn't need more milk. DD has never gone to bed in her cot without crying unless I fed her to sleep first, I thought this was just normal.
So I would say don't fix what's not broken and be grateful.

MamaBear17 · 04/08/2012 20:00

I found with the last feed if I gave my dd half before her bath and then the other half once we were about to put her to bed she took it better x

moojie · 04/08/2012 20:01

The only thing I would say is that maybe she is awake a little too long during the day. My ds is 17 weeks and sleeps 10-12hrs at night too. I find that if he is overtired going down for a nap he cries more and often needs cuddling or pushing in pram to sleep.

The first nap is after a shorter awake time and she seems to sleep well then. I find with my ds that after 1.5hrs if I quieten things down bit whilst ds1 watches tv I can get ds2 down without too much fuss.

Ds1 used to cry to sleep no matter what I did so it's all trial and error!

justabigdisco · 04/08/2012 20:05

Was also going to suggest feed before bath instead of after. My DD has got so used to bath meaning bedtime, that as soon as she gets out she's dropping off!

JiltedJohnsJulie · 05/08/2012 09:38

just was going to come back on and post exactly the same thing! If she is falling asleep after the bath then bottle, bath, bed might be the answer Smile.

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