Sorry for the long post but I'm seriously losing my sanity.
Our DS is 16 weeks old and for the last 4 weeks has been waking more and more through the night. Prior to then, he was nearly sleeping through with no problems.
Right now we are going through absolute hell with him waking on average 20 times a night!!
He has a dummy to go to bed with which sends him off to sleep and he always spits it out once he's asleep. He could always go back off to sleep through the night generally if he woke too. Not any more.
4 weeks ago, when he started to become unsettled, he would wake and we would find that he had got his arms out of his swaddle. He has always been a wriggler and whenever he woke before he had unswaddled himself. So we would re-swaddle him and pop his dummy in and that would be that. This happened more and more frequently, so we bought some diffrent swaddles (on our 5th!) to see if that was the problem. We are now using a Swaddleaze which he has more difficulty getting out of (but still does sometimes). We tried him in a sleeping bag but he would just rub his face to pieces and pull his dummy out and then cry. We have tried half swaddling, one arm only - you name it, we've tried it.
Lately, when he wakes (each and every 20 times a night), he cries and we just have to go in and put his dummy back into his mouth and he goes straight back to sleep only to wake 10/15 minutes later and we do it again.
Now here's the thing. He goes to bed at 7pm and has a dream feed at 10pm. He doesn't wake between. He only starts to wake up constantly through the night after about 1am. So, from 7 - 1am he is settled and asleep.
He sleeps fine during the day.
After reading up on the web, we think he may have a dependency on the dummy. Anyone agee?
The thing that we can't understand is why he wakes all night long when he didn't before? How come it only bothers him after 1am? Does a dummy addiction cause them to wake all the time? If so, why? Do they subconciously realise the dummy has fallen out and it wakes them?
Our health visitors are useless and suggested after saying 'I haven't got a clue' to either drop the 10pm feed or give him hungry baby formula at 10pm (didn't work). He's not hungry as he hasn't had a night feed for some time and was sleeping fine.
What I want to know is:
Does this sound like a dummy dependency thing and has anyone else had the same situation?
What's the best way to tackle it if it is?
We tried him in a sleeping bag without a dummy and giving him a 'blankie' but he just pulled violently at it and screamed.
The sleep deprevation is killing me. My wife's coping a little better (more patience). I have been off work for a long time for Anxiety related illnesses and have finally managed to get my life back on track and I was ready to get back to work but this stress is setting me back and I'm concerned that I will go back to the dark times I did previously.
Any advice appreciated as always.
If it helps, here's our DS's routine:
*Up at 7am - feed
*approx 8.30am nap for 2 hours
*11am - feed
*approx 12.30 nap for 2 hours
*3pm feed
*4pm nap for 50 mins
*6.00pm bath
*6.30pm feed
*7pm bed
*10pm dream feed