ds is 12 weeks old and either wakes up at 3am or 5am everynight wanting to get up for the day and I'm so fucked off!! :( feeling really angry and I know ds can't help it :(

[Fairylea]

I'm sitting here having been up since 5am and I'm seething with inner rage. Which I know is ridiculous as ds is 12 weeks old but I'm so pissed off.

Ds is my second baby. Dd is now 9 years old and she slept through from about 9 weeks. I (mistakenly perhaps) attributed that to me following bloody Gina Ford but after attempting it with ds and him basically sticking two fingers up to it I now realise dd was just a good sleeper. So this not sleeping stuff is absolutely killing me. What makes it almost worse is that compared to other peoples babies ds isn't too bad but I'm getting seriously depressed about never having a proper nights sleep. I'm an 8-10 hour person and I'm very fed up :(

Ds is formula fed. He is about 18lbs so a good weight and he is drinking 7oz bottles of sma gold (the only one that suits him) 6-7 times a day. He has two short naps of about 40 minutes during the day - one about 9ish /10ish and one about 3. He is a very alert and active baby and will happily lie on the baby gym mat and look at toys / kick / smile for ages, he does not like going in a sling and if I take him out in the car / buggy he thinks its all very exciting and won't sleep. Fine, I'd rather him not sleep during the day anyway BUT he isn't sleeping at night either (well not all night).

We have got a good bedtime routine going - he is in his own cot in his own room as ds and I are noisy and were waking him up - we have a baby monitor etc. He goes to bed after a bath about 7pm and has a last bottle in his room with the room dark, no talking etc. We put him down, if he fidgets we pick him up again and rock him a bit till he's drowsy (repeat maybe 3 times) and he'll fall asleep. All good - he will sleep till 3am usually.

The 3am one is the one that is killing me. I should think ds must be tired, sometmes he looks tired but he wakes shouting (not really crying but more of a "ahhh!" Type shout). So I pick him up, feed him and by the end of the bottle he seems sleepy so I put him down. Great! ... But by the time I get back to my own bed he's awake again - wide awake like its morning?!!!!!

So I then spend about an hour going back and forth rocking him, putting a dummy in (I am worried we're going to get to a point where he wakes looking for a dummy so I do try and settle him without it at first!) And generally faffing about. Sometimes he takes an hour and a half to go back to sleep which makes me feel really annoyed as its like I might as well of just got him up as he'd prob want a nap an hour and a half later anyway - ie he is just sleeping because he's got tired from being awake not because he knows its night!

Today he slept through till 4.45am but after trying to settle him for an hour I just got annoyed and decided to get up for the day. He's now under the play mat again he was starting to get upset with me trying to put him back to bed as he just wasn't tired in the slightest.

I just feel utterly fed up. When is he going to sleep through. I know some would say "oh he's only little / co sleep (I don't want to do this - I would not be able to sleep, I can barely sleep with dh next to me) ". But I'm seriously just fed up with the lack of sleep now.

My dh does help sometimes when he's not got a long day at work (works with aachinery so has to be careful) so its not more help I need I just need to know if anyone has any advice to stop this early morning "cooo eee its daytime!!" Shit ! :(

I know I sound very angry. I'm not angry at ds - I'm just angry with being so fucking tired.

Can you go to bed at 7 when you've put him down? This is what I did most nights until DD was 6 months. She's now 8 months and occasionally still do it if she's been up a lot in the night. I follow no routine but I've found that her sleep pattern has changed so much since she's been born, from 1-4 months she slept 10-12hrs a night but since then she's never slept more than 8hrs which is rare and I mostly get 3-4hr in a row. I'm sure it'll change again

whoops, posted too early! Anyway my point was that perhaps rather than changing the baby's sleep pattern, you should go to bed earlier as at least if he woke at 3am you'd still have your 8hrs if you went to bed at 7pm and it isn't forever.

Seems like he isn't getting enough sleep in the day.

Mine slept better at night, all night not unitl 7 months, if they had had proper naps in the day.

oh I know it's difficult, but honestly, that is good sleeping for a 12 week old! He sleeps from 7pm through to 4am? that's 9 hours straight.

My 4 month old still only does 6 hours mostly.

I think you just have to go to bed earlier and sleep when he does. in the long term he will have to learn to settle himself which it sounds as though he finds difficult. an alternative (which I do with my baby) is to start his sleep later - then if you put him down at 10pm maybe he will sleep through to 6am.

Oh love, i feel your pain - sleep deprevation is the worst thing ever, it's used as a form of torture, and it really is.

My baby is nearly 7 months and has gone from being a really good sleeper - 10-12 hours waking once or twice for a feed then back off, to waking every couple of hours and being awake for the day at fucokoffo'clock. It's hard work, especially with other children to look after.

The only thing i can suggest is if he is consistently waking about 3am, then maybe pre-empt him slightly by going into him at 2.30ish and giving him a bottle then - not waking him, but maybe dream feeding him? Theres a proper name for it, but it escapes me atm. He might go back off then. I know it would mean a few more nights of horribly unbroken sleep for you, but if it helps break this cycle that he seems to have got himself in, then it'd be worth it.

Hope you manage to get some rest today x

Can you give him a nap at 5pm then not put him down for the night until 9pm?

He is sleeping 7 till 3 at 12 weeks!! I think that is pretty good going for a 3monther. I believe that babies just do what they do when they are little and trying to force something else just drives everybody potty, especiallly since they can just start doing something completely different at any point. Which is why G Ford only works for people whose babies were going to be like that anyway :)

If I was you I would try and get some more sleep earlier in the evening yourself, go to bed at 8pm to catch up. And yes see if you can get him to nap a bit longer in the day- especially if it means you can grab 40 winks yourself at this point.

I also wonder whether being in a room on his own isn't helping. 12 weeks is really tiny to be sleeping alone. It might be that he is waking to a silent room, wondering where everyone is and why he is alone? He might be more inclined to fall back asleep if he could hear you nearby. This is the logic behind the 6month recommendation, that babies can hear their parents breathing which helps protect against SIDS

I know it's hard, but it does get better, hang in there.

I'd go with the people suggesting can you put him down a bit later, and then go to bed at the same time as him, to maximise the time both of you spend sleeping in a chunk.

Having had the early riser, its pants, as you can't go anywhere, do anything, need to stay reasonably quiet, and then are shattered when everyone else wants to start doing things!

He sounds overtired to me. Only two 40-minute naps during the day? That's no way near enough. My 15-month-old sleeps for an hour in the morning and 1.5 hours in the afternoon AND he sleeps 11 hours at night.

Your DS should be getting 14-16 hours of sleep per 24 hours at 12 weeks old, but he is getting just 9 hours, so I'm guessing that's the problem. He's desperately overtired - and that usually (and paradoxically), means these sort of issues.

TBH I'd be putting him to bed at 7pm, so adjust your bath and bottle routine to get him down at that time, and I'd be putting him down for a nap and doing what you can to encourage longer naps during the day.

Thank you for the replies. I know 7-3 is good but I don't want to go to bed at 7 - I can't anyway as I have a 9 year old whose bedtime is 8.30 and also as ds is active all day I need some "me" time because he isn't napping so I don't get this during the day as others would. If I try and encurage him to nap during the day or even at 5pm he just gets angry and screams / thrashes about. If we don't put him to bed at 7 then he gets overtired and won't sleep for hours (his record is 8 hours awake with NO sleep).

The idea of the dream feed is quite good, thank you. I will look into that :) the only thing that worries me about that is sometime he does go till 4 and once he even went till 6 (golden days!!!) So I worry if I am dream feeding at a certain time won't be come to depend on that feed and start being programmed to wake at that time?

I am going to bed myself at 9.30 but I have thyroid and pituitary issues and its still just leaving me exhausted.

Thank you for all the suggestions.

Also (sorry, hit post too early), I wouldn't get up at 3 or 4 or 5am, because he'll think that this is a suitable time to get up. I'd feed him and get him back down in a darkened room. Both of mine had to learn from an early age that Mummy doesn't get up before 6am, at the earliest. At night (i.e. from whenever they go to bed until 6am), the room would be dark, I had a dim light for nappy changes and feeds, I whispered, and I was basically in 'night mode' to teach them the difference between daytime and nighttime.

Seriously? You're sooooo lucky!
My DS didn't sleep for more than 3 hours in a row til he was over 5 months. At 12 weeks he was still waking every hour from 10pm. I didn't get a 4 hour stretch of sleep til he was 6 months. I would have killed for the type of sleep pattern you're describing!
It will get better, but tbh I think you may have rather too high expectations of a 12 week old. I'd echo what the others have said and start your own nights sleep as early as you can. Try if you can to let go of the anger about it though, in reality you're extremely lucky to have such a good sleeper, even if he's not making early mornings that much fun.

I appreciate the sids advice about him sharing a room with us but this is impractical for us as dh works shift work and doesn't come to bed until midnight or 1am some nights andwas just waking ds up. I do have a v ery good monitor and he is sleeping a lot better in his own room which is across the small hallway from us and next to his big sisters room.

I think you may be right, he may be overtired but how can I get him to sleep? The buggy doesn't work, walking him about in a sling or whatever doesn't work (he just gets really animated and excited!!) And the only time he sleeps during the day is if he's been up ages and he's basically shattered!!!

When I had my dd I thought it was a piece of cake getting a baby into a sleep routine and whatever - how wrong I was!!!!

To be clear - I'm not expecting him to sleep through - although that would be ideal!! - I just don't understand why he wakes up at 3am or whatever absolutely wide awake even though he goes down well at 7ish seemingly understanding that dark room / no talking etc means night! And he must be tired! So I just feel so frustrated :(
I'm sorry. I am just so worn out :(

Try putting him down for a nap 1-2 hours after he first wakes in the morning. By any means necessary - rocking or in a dark room.

Can you have some white noise in his room? Might help.

Also I reckon he doesn't want to get up at 4am - he wants to sleep on or with you at the hour. Both of mine were very unsettled at that time of day - it wasn't until they were older did they happily go back into their cots and sleep until morning. If I sat down and let them kip on me, theyd happily doze. Can you do this somehow? Can your DH go into the spare room or something for this short phase?

Also 12 weeks is when they wake up more and fight sleep. I found I had to walk for a long time in the sling next to a busy road to get dd to sleep - I'd plan my days accordingly. By 5 months though she was napping in her cot.

Also you said sma gold was the only one that suits him - what do you mean?

My babies slept much worse than that and the only way I coped was going to bed really, really early myself.

Getting up at 5am is much more bearable if you go to bed at 8 or 9pm.

Would that work for you?

Oh yes, white noise, I used it a LOT with DS1 who was a terrible sleeper there are various CDs and an iPhone app, it did work for us. The whole family happily napped to it. I also did going for a short drive to get him off in the daytime.

It is the most difficult thing about babies IMO but it will pass, you'll get through it

Thanks. We don't have a spare room but I suppose I could bring him in bed with me at the early feed - I just really don't think he will settle :( I do all the rocking ssshing no talking dark room whatever else and he just waves his arms about and gets more and more shouty / fed up - I can be at it for an hoyr or two before he goes back to sleep - and then its near 5.30am and I have to get up at 6 / 6.30 anyway so I end up getting up thinking wtf is the point. :( we only have a small double bed and I won't be able to sleep with ds next to me either. I will worry about squashin him or him falling out.

I have ordered a moby sling as we had a baba sling and he hated that. So I'm wondering if that will be better. Who knows.

I have given up trying to put him down for a nap as I can spend 3 hours trying to get him to sleep and he still won't go. So I just feel like I've wasted 3 hours I could spend doing housework or playing with him under the play mat! The closes he will get to napping is if I put him in the bouncy chair and bounce him with my foot while he sucks a dummy - then he will doze with his eyes half shut but if I take my foot off he's literally wide awake again, like he's been asleep for hours!!!

He had mild reflux as a very young baby so he was on medication and I tried several milks. The sma gold is the only one he isn't sick or have colic on. He isn't taking medication anymore as he seems so much better - not crying out or anything and seems settled in that respect.

I will try the white noise. My only problem with that is dh can hear the baby moitor in our room while I'm settling ds so if I'm playing white noise this will probably wake dh up! :) but I could give it a go, thank you.

I'd say you need to start imposing a new, better routine on him. It sounds like he's calling the shots at the moment and that's not working for you.

Firstly, don't wait until he's exhausted to put him down to sleep - it will take him forever to fall asleep if you do that. At 12 weeks I would expect that he needs three naps a day, but you should probably start by trying to get two good naps from him and I would just put him down at an appropriate time - generally 2-3 hours after he last woke up. Any longer than that between sleeps and he'll be overtired.

You've probably already got your little routine going, but if you haven't, develop one. It will let him know that it's time to sleep. You'll have to persevere a bit, but he's only 12 weeks, so a week or two of a new routine should have him getting the idea.

With my DSs I gave them a feed, a cuddle and put them down with the mobile on. I drew the curtains, said 'It's time for a nap now', patted them on the back, and left the room. He'll probably protest at first, but resist the temptation to rush back into the room every time he whimpers. I used the Ferber method to get mine used to self-settling (you leave them for one minute, go in, pat, reassure, leave), then two minutes, then five, etc until you've got them falling asleep.

A white noise app was my holy grail. It still is, and DS3 is 2.5!
It drowns our all the other noises, even though not turned up loud. I've used it from just after birth, and he seems conditioned to know now at nap time and bed time that if it's dark and the white noise is on, it's time to go to sleep. He will sleep without now so there's no rod/back thing going on, but it does make things easy and is part of the routine.

As for waking up DH through the monitor, you may find to the contrary! I sometimes use it when it's my lie-in, drowns out the kids murdering each other fighting.

Anyway, it's definitely worth a go. It really worked for us. Choose a nice combo of sounds, like waves and rain. Loads of iOS and Android apps out there.

Also YY to putting down for a nap 1-2 hours after he wakes. Tricky if he's waking at 4am, but if he then napped from 6-8am (still kind of a top up to the long night sleep), assuming you've then got a school run to do, back down for a nap after it.
Hope you get some sleep soon.

I had to dream feed DS until he was 6 months old, I think some babies especially boys cant go for long periods without their milk.

He is still very young at 12 weeks, but no sleep is the most awful thing.

During the day could you get into bed with him for a nap? My DS always napped better like that.

Juneau - just wondering how old your DS's were when you started the Ferber method of checking on them at intervals? We did it from 5 months with DS1 and it worked well -just wondering if doing it from the start when you established a routine or earlier would have been better?

I know how tough it is Fairylea -if it makes you feel better my 7 week old is often awake all night and will sleep from 5am-6am and then wants to get up. I feel shattered. Sleeping to 3am sounds wonderful to me but it's all relative. Good luck.

No real advice, but I wanted to send a manly pat on the back and some empathy

My DS2 was like this, except it would take over an hour to settle him at bedtime, he would wake randomly and take hours to settle, and would be up and ready for the day at 5am. Like your DS, he wasn'tt a daytime dapper either.

We had a bedside cot, you know the ones with no bars so he was close but had his own space. He was also bf, which made getting milk to him quickly, and this probably helped.

We tried putting him down later, he got up at the same time and spent the day after really tired and grumpy instead of tired and grumpy

However, his sleeping patterns haven't changed a great deal at almost 4. He goes to bed without a fuss at 6.30pm, rarely wakes in the night and gets up anytime between 4.30 and 5.30am.

I work evenings, so my poor DH is in bed by 9pm to deal with it.

Anyway, the thing that worked for us, was not ever lifting him If he woke between bedtime and a reasonable wakibg time. It took hard work and detetmination, and a fair few sleepless nights, and nights spent sleeping on his floor once in his own room, but It Is much easier now.

You haven't mentioned your DP. Do you have support? Does he take over at weekends so you can get some much needed sleep?