13 week old , no sleep, help needed before I loose my . marbles

[MunchkinJess]

I have posted on here before but cant find my previous post.

my DD is 3 months old and she seems allergic to sleep

I have a small routine going for a few weeks now of a bath around 5:30ish, massage, bottle and bed for 7pm, she is now happy in her routine she cant really stay up past 7pm and she self settles in her cot very well... all good here.

I dreamfeed her at 10pm all good here.

most nights she is up any time between 1am to 3am. the latest she has woken up is around 3:30am ... no complaint here as she normally is quite hungry and has a bottle.

the problem we are having is getting her back to sleep and getting her to sleep till at least 6/7am.

last night she was up at 3am.. fed her back down and she was up from 5am ... I am starting to loose my marbles and the lack of sleep is getting to me.

She is in her own room, always keep it quiet and dim at night.

health visitor said that she wont really sleep through the night till she is about 6 months, but I dont think I can cope like this for another 3 months.

she wont take more than 4 ounces a feed, i have tried even with a break and she just sick it all back up so I dont want to keep trying to give her more.milk if she is just gonna be sick.

she doesn't really nap during the day and she has been showing signs of teething for the last month or so ..

I was just wondering if anyone had any tips that may help.

I've a 13 week old two & I found she started sleeping better at night once I started putting her for regular naps in the day. She is usually up for an hour & a half then has an hour to an hour & quarter nap at 9am, another at 11:30, then 2:30 & a half hour nap at 5:30, I know it seems counterintuitive but it helps her sleep better at night.
I also do a dreamfeed at 11.

Hello OP you have my sympathies, sleep deprivation is awful.

I agree with SmallBee,try to make sure your LO has plenty of naps during the day...she might not be ready for lovely long naps yet. At that age my DS just had 30 mins, four times per day, and it worked for him. Basically, I kept my eye on the clock and tried to get him to sleep (either in buggy, car, cot or in my arms) after he had been awake for 90 mins or 2 hours at the most. Repeat this pattern throughout the day and you might find your LO goes down for naps better. If she's not really napping at all now, you might find its cos you;re leaving it far too long to try, and then she is over tired. Babies that age can't stay away longer than 2 hours at a time, I found.

Wrt to the night times, I am afraid to say this sounds within the realms of normal for 13 week old. She WILL get better at sleeping in the next few months as she gets bigger, more alert, more active during the day. She will need more sleep. It wont be like this forever.

In the meantime, as a survival tactic can you try:

• if she goes down at 7pm and settles to sleep, and sleeps nicely until dream feed at 10pm, can you maybe go to bed at 8pm and ask your OH to do the dream feed bottle at 10pm? So then you get to sleep from 8pm - 1am or whenever she starts waking up? I found that getting a 4-5 hour block of sleep somewhere in the night was the difference between feeling insane and just 'tired.' Yes, it means your relationship with your OH will be pretty much non existent but I promise you this will be a short term survival tactic.

• If you really are struggling to get her back off to sleep in the middle of the night, would you consider co-sleeping with her just for the last few hours of the night? It's not for everyone but it beats walking round the house with a wailing baby at 4am??

I hate to say it, but 5am wake ups for the day can be quite common for babies at this age....we definitely went through it with DS a couple of times, I remember one time around 6months for a few weeks, and at 13wo he was still very unsettled from 4am onwards so I couln't really call it a 5am start, cos he hadn't really gone back to sleep.

For us, this awful period did end at around 6mo when he was weaned and started rolling over to sleep on his front. I think he sleeps more deeply on his front. And being full of food I think helped him too. However, it did get incrementally better from about 3.5 months onwards so you've not got long to go.By about 4mo I felt like it was survivable.
In the meantime: get ye to bed at 8pm!!