11 week old not sleeping at night

[WaitingforStork]

I thought we had finally cracked it with our dd last week, she was down to one overnight feed and I was beginning to feel human again. However the last two nights she has been impossible to settle.

Usually have last big feed between 9 and 10, sit her up for about half and hour, she is really windy, until she starts to drift off. Then we all go to bed. She is bf and sleeps in a crib right beside the bed. She would then sleep until about 3, have a short feed and go straight down again.

The last two nights she has fed as usual but will not settle, is clearly wide awake, happy if being held but if put down starts wriggling and throwing arms about and making loud grunting noises. She has always made these noises, never cute cooing ones, pretty sure she's not in any pain, just her making her presence known.

So last two nights have been feed at 9, bed at 10 trying to settle her til 1 when she finally fell asleep only to wake up at 2 wanting fed again then taking til 4 to settle, up at 6 then up for the day.

I do all the feeding, bf, and night settling as dh works and needs his sleep but the last couple of nights have driven me demented. Guess I'm looking for some reassurance that this change is normal and maybe down to some sort of growth spurt. Her day time routine hasn't changed and I'm not sure about keeping her awake all evening in an attempt to get her to sleep at night, she would only fall asleep while we were cooking and eating dinner.

She was 5 weeks premature if anyone thinks that would make a difference, not sure if growth spurts are measured from birth or gestation. She feeds on demand and have offered her feed to try settling her and she's not interested so happy its not due to hunger. Finally resorted to letting her sleep on my chest in bed at 5 this morning, breaking every rule in the book but was the only way I could get any sleep.

She's sleeping in her bouncy chair now so off to try and have a nap on the sofa...

She's very tiny, I don't think you can really do differently to what you are doing already! Other than keeping the nights dark and boring so they learn to distinguish between night and day, I would roll with it and catch up on sleep when you can. If possible get DH to do a shift so you can manage (for example, if he did the late feed you could go to bed really early and sleep until 2AM which would make a big difference).

Let her settle on you if that's what she needs, the rod-for-own-back rulebooks forget that babies change and so what they might need at 11 wks they'll often drop of their own accord at four months or whatever. My sister-in-law swore I'd have to rock DD to sleep for the rest of my life because I did when she was tiny. Balls. One day I went out of the room to have a slurp of tea while putting her to bed, and she went to sleep on her own (aged about 7 months).

Thank you for taking time to reply, think I've found the cause of the problem. One of her bottom front teeth is poking through and seems to be quite uncomfortable. Gave her a dose of calpol last night and she's just slept from 11 to 5.45, a new record! I feel like a new woman! Going to get some teetha today.

She is very young to be getting a tooth, are you sure?

They can be born with teeth!

Yup, I've been able to see her bottom two teeth through the gums since she was born and now there is a white spot on the corner where it has come through, you can feel it with your finger too. i thought they didn't get teeth until about 5 months but apparently it can be earlier. Would also explain why she has been a bit fussier eating, must be uncomfortable.