HELP! 19 week old is a TERRIBLE sleeper!

[BritishBeef]

Hi all,
We have a 19 week old daughter (4 months). She slept through the night at about 7 weeks which was bliss as our 3 year old son didn't until 8 months. Well it was very short lasting! About 2 months ago, she got her first cold and a bad cough which kept her awake most of the night.
The cough got better about a month ago but the sleepless nights have continued and are getting worse.

She now wakes about every 30 minutes crying through the night from about 2am. She will generally go down ok at 7pm (sometimes after a LOT of screaming). She often wakes a few times between 7pm and 10.30pm (when we give her a feed). After that she will sleep until about 2am and then the 30 minutes (an hour if we're lucky) wake cycle begins. This continues until we get her up at about 7.30am. By 6am, her waking has disturbed our 3 year old son who sleeps in the room next door and so he is then up too!

All we have to do when she wakes during the night/early morning is pop her dummy back in and she will go back to sleep.

She has always been a poor daytime napper. Even when she was sleeping through. If we go out during the day she won't sleep for more than 10 minutes all day. If we are at home then she will wake constantly for first hour then may sleep soundly for about an hour.

I guess the problem is the dummy as she is too young to replace the dummy herself. She is also swaddled. Our DS also had a dummy and by and large it was a great success. I seem to remember us going through a similar thing with him but not for as long. When he could replace them himself I remember we used to put several in the cot around him and that worked.

Anyway, needless to say both my wife and I are absolutely exhausted. IT's not helped by the fact that we have all had (and still do) colds for the last couple of months!!!

So, what can we do? I don't like the thought of removing the dummy as she really hates to be held when she's ready for sleep at night and just wants to be in her cot so I know that if we tried to console her (because she has no dummy) she would just scream blue murder.

What can we do?

Oh you poor things. I'd be tempted to work on the daytime napping and trying to stretch them out beyond 10 minutes. If they're overtired because of no rest during the day that can knock on to a fractious baby all night as well. Slings, swings, prams, carseats... find something that means she stays asleep for as long as possible until she's back to a more settled pattern. Good luck

We have a similar story with my DS, the difference being he has decent daytime naps.

He goes to sleep at 6-6.30 no problem, but from (aprox) midnight onwards we're up on average 5-6 times through the night. He's fed from 4.30-6am then he'll snooze on and off until about 8am. He also goes back to sleep with the dummy, but he's too small to put it back in himself (20 weeks). I'm hoping that weaning him will help, but other than that there's little advice that I can find other than 'he will grow out of it'. Some nights I bring him into bed with us as we get a little more sleep but I really don't want this to become a habit as I'm determined he won't be a child who sleeps with us for years.

I've read about the 'cold turkey' dummy removal but I'd feel guilty as he loves his dummy and I can see the pure relief when we give him it....I don't want to deny him if he enjoys it!

Has anyone cracked a similar problem?