Help! sleep all going wrong at 20 weeks

[Giddyup]

I thought I had escaped this blasted 16 week regression for th 2nd time. DD 20 weeks today has always been a brilliant sleeper at night. She regularly did 6-8 hours from birth, has known the difference between night and day since day one and has been self settling at 7pm and either sleeping through until 7am or waking once or on a really bad night twice since Christmas time.

Her sleep all went wrong when we went to Australia for 3 weeks in Feb but quickly righted itself when we got home and since then has even been self settling in the day (only for 40 mins in cot at a time but previously all naps had to be in pram).

She has been making teething noises for a few weeks now but there are none on the horizon yet. Last week she began having trouble going to sleep which we put down to teething after 2 nights she was OK again. She is distracted when feeding in the day at the moment and would rather look around/chew her fist/bite my finger but doesn't seem to be in any pain.

Since last week she has been gradually waking more and more times each night and either feeding for a few mins (night feeds are always short anyway) or comfort sucking and going back to sleep. Last night she woke at 11pm, 1.30, possibly 3.30 (can't remember) 6 and 8 am . As this has never been a problem before now I have always just immediately fed at night wakings.

So far tonight she has already woken and was really cross when I tried to resettle her without feeding so I did but she just wanted to feed to sleep. She seems to be getting less interested in milk every day as the night wakings increase night by night.
Ha this happened to anyone else?
Should I stop feeding her in the night? as it is just getting worse every night/day and she self settles quite happily at bed time and in the night up until now and she is not feeding properly in the day.

Should I do PUPD? shush pat? (never had much success with this for day time naps) or just re settle and sit with her/ pop back in every so often?

Sorry for the essay!

Hello,

I could have written your post! MY DD also did 6-8 stretches from the start and then sleeping through from 6 weeks. 19 weeks all went wrong with no warning. We put up with it for a few weeks and then started introducing a rule that I would feed her back to sleep if it had been a decent interval e.g. 4 hours since last feed (she's 7 months so this is perfectly reasonable at night, given she will go 3.5 hours in day without any milk or solids) but if there were subsequent wakings DP would rock her back to sleep. This did seem to work and overall night wakings have reduced from 3-4 to 1-2. She's refusing to drop the 4am feed atm but I can live with that! I also introduced an earlier bedtime to try and rule out overtiredness.

So my advice would be to feed her if you reasonably think she could be hungry e.g it's a few hours since last feed, otherwise get someone else to re-settle her - if it;s you she'll just look for milk. For us this did reduce the number of wake-ups. Remember if she really is hungry she won't settle without being fed (well unless she cries herself out but I am asuming you would not let this happen) so there is no harm in persisting with re-settling her without a feed!

Ah thanks for replying. it is so irritating isn't it? it feels like pointless waking IYSWIM; I don't mind being up because my baby is hungry or poorly or scared but just because they have suddenly developed a habit sucks just a bit!

DP works away a couple of nights in the week and most weekends and has a long commute on other days so I think unfortunately the settling will mainly have to fall to me which will be confusing for DD but it seems the only way.

I can cope with one wake up especially when i have a rough idea of when it may be but I am constantly waiting for her to wake at the moment. I have friends coming to stay tomorrow night so depending on how I feel I might wait until Sunday to get tough!