I would like, very calmly, to discuss sleep training for a 3 month old

[CharlotteBronteSaurus]

dd2 is waking hourly. has been for a week. i am broken. unsafe to drive. so dd1 has to miss toddler group this morning. this is affecting the whole family and must change. I am not aiming for her to sleep through, far from it. I would just like perhaps a 3 hour stretch of sleep, and then maybe a couple of 2 hour stretches.

one issue is that she likes to be swaddled but then breaks free and wakes herself. i need to move her into a grobag, but there will be tears. any advice on pick-up put-down, staying with her, soothing in the crib? how have others managed the transition when your dc has needed swaddle/dummy/rocking and you've needed to stop?

yes Matt - I am pleased that this has been such a supportive thread. true to the original ethos of MN and all that jazz

Charlotte - nothing more to add really as most suggestions already been made but did want to extend my sympathy as I know EXACTLY what you are going through. DD2 is 4 months and rarely does more than 2 hours continuous sleep. We have a good stretch (on the whole but not every day) during the evening but then from the 10/11pm feed, it goes to pot with her waking anywhere between 45mins and 90mins.

We are trying many of the things suggested above but none work totally! Some things (putting her on her side and singing and/or DH rocking!) help her settle without a feed. She too is a bottle refuser so no break there and DH is a really heavy sleeper so I tend to do it all in the night as by the time he has realised she needs attention, she is wailing uncontrollably and wherever I am in the house, i get there first!

I am sincerely hoping that the introduction of solids when she is a little older will help as she frequently wakes to fart/poo and am hoping solids will bung her up a bit!!

I know I am massively grasping at straws but truly feel your pain!

I start each night with a new optimism and by midnight after 3 wakings, I am just counting the minutes til the morning as the daytimes are just so much easier!

OP, we were in exactly the same position as you at exactly that age (DD now 7 months). Would only feed to sleep for all naps, night time and night wakes. She also had colic so all that feeding was really messing up her digestion. I'm not saying it's right for all but we did PUPD at 13/14 weeks and it seems that that was what she needed. Started having proper sleeps, waking for hunger rather than needing resettling etc. I think it's harder to do at this young age (some babies do well with shush pat but our DD got disrupted by this) but it helped her sleep almost immediately. Good luck, know exactly what you're going through xx

No answers, but tons of sympathy. My DS, 5 months, has been waking hourly for the last 10 nights and it is brutal. I feel your pain.
However, for the past two nights he has slept for a two-hour stretch and one (blissful) 3 hour stretch after trying the NCSS...has gone a bit tits up tonight, though, and he's been wakening on the hour again.
As I say, no solution, but tea and sympathy.

Haven't read whole thread so someone else may have mentioned this, but with regards to the swaddling, we had this brilliant thing called a halo sleepsack swaddle. It is a grobag with special wrap around wing type things which keep arms tucked in. If you remove the wrap it is a normal grobag. My (v big and wriggly) dd wore one until 5 months and it kept her in if we did it up nice and tightly! Until then she could not seem to sleep at all unswaddled and it made a hug difference. The fleecy one worked better as it was sort of stiffer.

I was in a similar situation with DS at that age. I focussed on getting him to nap really well using whatever means necessary (rocking the pram, walks, sling etc) to get 3 decent naps a day. I then worked up to having one nap in his cot. I used Sh/Pat from the Baby Whisperer to get him off to sleep for the nap in his cot - somehow it doesn't seem as daunting in the daylight. During that period, I did whatever I needed to do at night (including sitting in front of the TV with him asleep on my shoulder) until I had got the naps straight. Then the nighttime sleep somehow became easier and I was more comfortable using Sh/Pat if I needed to. I also made sure bedtime routine was exactly the same and at the same time every night which seemed to help too.

I also switched to merino grobags which seemed to help with regulating his temperature in winter.

Good luck!!

I had similar problems with dd and breaking out of her swaddle causing unnecessary waking. I used a Woombie instead of a swaddling blanket - this kept her arms and body zipped in, but still allowed some arm movement (my aim was to use this as an in-between step between tight swaddling and gro-bag.) After a few weeks I found that she was making struggling sounds trying to burst out of it in the night, so I swapped back to swaddling but left one arm out. This was surprisingly successful so I started leaving both arms out (swaddled her body for the first few sleeps) and now we are swaddle free at 18 weeks (started this process about 4 weeks ago).

I feel your pain with the frequent wakings. Our night wakings have gone dramatically downhill in the last week - think we've hit the fabled 4 month sleep regression :(

Re soothing in the crib, we put dd down awake and when she cries we let her suck our little finger (she won't take a dummy) - this sucking soothes her to sleep if she is too upset or overtired to do it herself (which is 70% of time). I guess it's a bad habit to have got into, but is preferable to many of the other bad habits we could have acquired to assist her to sleep!

I sympathise on the swaddle issue, but IMO a tighter / escape proof swaddle is the way forward for now. I weaned DS off the swaddle twice before he wanted me to - result was that naps were no longer than 15 mins and he went from waking 1-2 times a night to waking 9/10+ times a night, so after a few days of pain, we went back to the swaddle. If a baby's not ready to sleep without it, it won't work.

He decided he hated it suddenly at 5.5 months, when (amazingly) it turned out he didn't need it any more. It was quite sudden - the previous attempt to get him in a growbag was only a few weeks before.

Agree with MUA on naps - at least 3, maybe 4 a day at that age. 1.5 hours awake time is a good rule of thumb (that includes soothing to sleep time), although some babies can go a bit longer. It may be as little as 45 mins first thing in the morning. A nap of less than 30 mins definitely doesn't count. Try to sling / pram / whatever gets you the longest naps & your nights should benefit.

How are you today Charlotte?

thanks everyone

we are doing PUPD.
This has meant a fair bit of crying at nap time, but to be honest even when slung/rocked to sleep she would have a good old cry for 15mins before dropping off most of the time.

She woke last night 4 times, after I did PUPD at bedtime for about 40 mins. She went into her grobag for the first time. I fed her 3 times - DH did PUPD the other time as it was pretty close to her last feed. She is pretty smiley today so i haven't totally destroyed our relationship yet .

TBH I am not happy with this level of crying on a long term basis (not that she's cried for 40mins each time), but we've agreed to give it a good try for 3 days, and then revert to rocking her to sleep if we can't get the crying down.

She has started to suck her hands, and i think perhaps this is why she was breaking free of the swaddle. so i don't want to get more heavy-duty swaddle gear as i think i would be preventing her from soothing herself with her fingers as she seems to want to do. she's not very good at it yet though, obviously.

She is just stirring from her second nap of the day - both good ole 45minuters.

All baby's have a growth spurt at 3 months. This can last from 2- 3days or a week. It will leave them very unsettled. I remember my little boys 3 month growth spurt, it was by far the worse time for us!! No sleep and lots of crying. I'm sure everything will settle down soon, remember to sleep during the day when you can. Also, my boy was teething at 3 months so we started giving 5 mls of calpol before bed. He got his first tooth at 4 months even though all the HV's said he wasn't teething and would get teeth till atleast 6 months! As soon as his tooth came through i started him on solid food. Been a dream since. Good luck, I'm sure things will calm down soon :)

My DD is hand sucking furiously (and also drooling) a bit too. I wonder if there is any correlation between early teething and 99th centile babies?

Please will you let me know how the PUPD goes? Shush patting just winds my DD up, but picking her up instantly soothes her.

After saying nights at my house are not a problem- last night was hideous, but not really caused by DD.

She woke at 2am (its normally not until at least 4) ad she was absolutely soaked through from the crappy Boots nappy I tried. She had a feed and went straight back to sleep. I however laid awake with the most hideous insomnia until she woke again at 4.30 (I had rum and coke far too late in the eve and I am not used to the caffeine/sugar any more). I don't actually think she was waking up, I just picked her up when she made a noise as i was desperate to get to sleep. She then woke up covered in wee again at 6.30am and then noisily dozed until 8am when I had to get DS ready. I think I got 3 hours broken sleep!

Hi Charlotte, no advice here either, just renewed sympathy, we are still in a similar situation, although a couple of nights this week DS has managed a 3-hour stretch to start the night and then a 2-hour stretch, so there is some progress.

DS was also 99th centile at birth and is dribbling and chewing his fists a lot (12 weeks) - seems all these babies have things in common. I am hoping he will suck his fingers, he just chews them at present.

I have been focusing on good naps, and it seems DS does better on 3/4 shorter naps (with one over an hour in length), rather than two 2-hr naps, which is what I was trying before. I am also doing anything I can do get the sleep at night, including 'bad habits' like feeding to sleep and sleeping with DS in arms.

Will be interested to hear how PUPD goes. Good luck and hope you get some better sleep soon.

Get a woombie they are great and ignore the trying to suck fingers my dd is 12weekd and won't sleep without it at night even though sucks fingers all day

can you get your dh to wear the sling. at that age my dd would go out in the sling with my dh for up to 4 hours at a time - he'd take her in town and have a coffee while she slept soundly from the walk and i'd get a break. i know its NOT a long term solution but a couple of times so you can just sleep might be really helpful.

hope it all calms down soon its bloody hard work when they wont stay asleep

A Peke Moe would be a good alternative to a swaddle - it's a cross between a swaddle blanket & a sleeping bag, and allows babies to suck their fists but not have them waving as much as in a sleeping bag.

Pidgin, that sounds sensible on naps - most babies don't drop to only two naps until 6-9 months.

OP, if PUPD doesn't work now, don't despair as the Baby Whisperer says it often doesn't work for babies aged 3-4 months - and sometimes not until 5 months +).

have not tread thread, but she sounds like my niece who had reflux....

otherwise why not try a gina routine, you have nowt to lose at this stage

poor you, good luck

thanks again for all the support and advice.
for those who asked, i'll fill you in on how it's going. for those who didn't, this will be long and boring, so get the thread hidden.

i don't want to jinx things, and i'm sure we're not out of the woods yet, but we had a really good night.

dd2 went down at 7pm. awake in cot. no pupd. she woke at 10.15, 2.50 - went down probably asleep after a good long bf each time. i didn't try to resettle her first, just bfed. at 6am dd1 came in and started mithering that the cat was bothering her, which may or may not have caused dd2 to wake up. which she did. bf and up for the day.

the naps were pretty gruelling yesterday though, with dh doing pupd for 40mins for one, and dd2 fighting sleep hard. i also spent some time doing pupd to extend one of the naps, which worked - she went on to sleep for another 2hours. i did this because on waking she was crying, with her eyes tight shut, trying for all the world to suck her fingers, and looking desperately like a girl who wanted more sleep.

I am working on the theory that she has been chronically overtired, and trying to get her to nap frequently and for as long as possible. her tired signs seem almost non-existent, so it's been really hard to hit the sweet spot between not tired and overtired, especially with dd1 being around. we've not gone for a routine yet, as i'm finding just trying to get her to sleep when tired is hard enough.

after having got the longer stretches at night, her bfs felt longer, with stronger sucking and more gulping. i think that previously the frequent waking and then snacking for 20 seconds or so before unlatching might have added to the overall difficulties in getting any stretches of sleep longer than an hour.

anyhow, i'm not expecting it all to be plain sailing from here on, but i feel an awful lot better after getting about 6 hours sleep last night (albeit in 1, 3, and 2 hour chunks). no more than a handful of 20 minute snatches of sleep over a week , was really too little for me to function. the four day long headache has gone now too.

am off to help dh with the dds.

Night sounds much better :)

On sleep signs, my DD's are non-existent until she is way too overtired to sleep and then we can fight for 40 mins to get her to sleep (I try to feed her to sleep and she drops off at boob within minutes but then stirs again etc) Hence why I've found the 2 hours advice so helpful. I put her down in her cot awake at around the 2 hour post-waking mark, even if she seems alert and happy. Usually she will be asleep within 10 mins, with just a bit of cooing and not much grumbling. I got 2 naps right yesterday doing this, but missed one horribly and had a very tired, grumpy baby for the rest of the day

So rather than watching for signs of sleep, maybe try the "she's been awake since 7 so at 8.55 i'm going to pop her on the bed/in her cot/take her for a walk in the pram" and just see what happens.

Glad to hear you've had a bit of improvement at least. I do think yopu're right about her being chronically overtired. We found that DS got much easier to get to sleep once we got some decent naps under his belt at around 9 weeks (we did it by using a sling). Before that, he was so overtired it was always a real struggle.

We found that once he was past the chronically overtired stage, he started to show tired signs (which he hadn't done before), which made it a lot easier.

Hopefully there should be a virtuous circle with better nights helping her nap better and vice versa.

Glad it sounds like things are improvingfor you and after six hours sleep you must be invincible!!

Just a final thought if she is sucking fingers would a comforter toy or similar to chew on heelp? One of mine loved a label to suck and the other had a rabbit with knotted legs and he would suck on the knot bit??

Sorry haven't read the whole post but...My ds used to like to be swaddled, so he was in a sheet over his grobag. Folded the corner over by his head, and then wrapped it round and round before tucking the end back in. There was no way he was getting out of it!!

thanks for the suggestions
dd2 is now waking every 2-3hours for night feeds, rather than hourly. I am happy. well, not happy, but accepting of this as well within the bounds of age appropriate.

she stopped properly crying before sleeps after a day, and now kind of sings/grizzles for maybe 5 minutes before nodding off. I'm still rocking her to super-drowsy before this. I think the first day's crying was about her getting used to being in a grobag.

She is obsessed with her hands - looking, waving, sucking, so i think perhaps restricting access to her hands was contributing a bit to her wakings. She's been sucking/chewing my fingers loads, so we're following hairybabysmum's advice and going shopping for chew toys tomorrow .

Glad the situation has got better and you are getting a bit more sleep...hope you're beginning to feel human again as a result!!