Sleep issues - ie we're getting none!

[broodylicious]

Please help MNers! Our 20 week old is having major issues in the sleep department. She is awake at night far more than she should be and it's driving DH and I completely bonkers. We have a good bath/feed/bed routine which sees her in bed and asleep for 730 every night. She goes off relatively easy at 730 then wakes at 1030. I offer a feed (she is ebf) and then put her back down, drowsy not fully asleep. Five minutes later, she's awake again. So I continue to feed for a little while til she falls asleep and she goes back into her crib (still in with us). Then starts the nightmare - she wakes every 60-90 minutes. If we are lucky. Last night she woke every 20-30 minutes until DH took her downstairs at 4am to give me a rest and allow dd to sleep on his chest.
I can't do this for much longer as i am truly exhausted.
Have any of you any advice for things we can do to help her/us?
I know there's four month sleep regression and teething could be playing a part but this is getting me really frustrated and upset.

A piece of research in 2010 showed that at 3 months, half of babies are having a longest sleep period of 5 hours. So about half of parents are having a similar time to you, with a longest sleep period of less than 5 hours. (Starting that longest sleep a bit later may feel easier, as you'll get more sleep during the early hours). By 9 months, the longest sleep was 8 hours for 75% of babies (so less than that for 25%).

There's some useful info on the NCT website www.nct.org.uk/parenting about babies sleep, and how you can respond to night-time waking. It is exhausting. And it will change.

The MOST dangerous thing you can do is fall asleep with a baby on a sofa, so please avoid either you or your partner doing this.

All the best.

Have you tried jiggling her awake while she's feeding so that she takes a proper feed and she's not waking up hungry thereafter? Does she have both sides and how long does she feed for? It's normal for a 20 week old to wake several times a night (DS sometimes used to wake up every 40 minutes at this age so I feel your pain) but it sounds like she's hungry.

All I can say is I feel your pain - DS was exactly the same and it was hell on earth.

bUT

Last night (he's now 37 weeks) he only woke twice between 7pm and 6am!!

Hang in there :)

You say she wake at half 10 every night? You could try offering a dream feed. Wake her up at about 10 o clock and feed her while she is still asleep and see if that helps her sleep a bit longer.

Hi there, just wanted to sympathise, am going through the same thing with my 14 week old. She sleeps from 8-12pm then wakes every 30-45 minutes, then up for the day from 5-6am. It's been nearly 3 weeks now and the exhaustion is killing me. Until 3 wks ago she was waking once or twice at most.

In passing, my GP said that at 3 months most babies' sleep patterns change, they sleep more lightly and wake up more during the night. If they have 'sleep associations' (ie things that parents usually use to get them off to sleep, eg dummy or feeds, in my case both) then baby relies on this association to get back to sleep and cant self settle. The GP said that for her ds the only things that changed the pattern and taught self soothing was controlled crying at 6 months. Not sure I can face that (and not sure how practical it is to do that at 2am anyway...).
Am hoping my dd will either learn to suck her thumb or pick up the dummy before I collapse....