Nighttime hourly waking!!

[gg321]

My baby girl is nearly 4 months old. I am exclusively BF. Our problem is her sleep, or lack of it! Most days she will go without a nap, and when she does occasionally have a daytime nap it will only be brief, so you'd probably think she makes up for it a night, and she does get 10+ hours most nights but it is very very broken, often with her waking every hour! She seems to be getting worse not better, in the early days she was doing 3 hour chunks, but not now and I am becoming completely exhausted as cannot get into a deep sleep, usually only getting about 45 mins myself each time she sleeps. We go to bed every night at 7.30 after bath and story ( I know I have no evenings anymore! And lots laugh at me for going to bed at this time with her but I don't mind!) she feeds to sleep and now usually falls asleep just after 8. When she wakes she only usually wakes for 5mins, has a quick feed then straight back to sleep. I don't think she is waking because she is hungry as she only feeds for a few mins, she doesn't cry she just stirs and fusses until I roll over to feed her. I have tried ignoring her to see if she settles herself but then she just cries. She is in with me most nights so it's easy to feed her when she wakes and sometimes in her crib which opens up onto bed. But I just want some longer sleeps from her at night. I think she's over tired in the day which is why she doesn't sleep then because of her broken sleep at night, so I'm thinking if I can sort her night sleeps, daytime naps will come! Or do you think if I get her to sleep better in daytime first her better night sleeping will come?! At night I have tried so much, swaddling, different sleep bags, in the crib, in the bed, different room temps (she does always sleep much better when room is warmer but I then worry it's too warm!) we've tried different feeding routines before bed, lots of feeding pre bed and we've tried leaving more time and big feed just before bed. Tried room in darkness, with light on, tried white noise, I just cannot get her to sleep longer, I've tried changing her nappy, leaving her nappy all night, picking up for winding, not winding I'm just exhausted and convinced now it's just her routine as she's so used to doing it, how can I break this?! I cannot even begin to imagine how I get her to sleep in her own room in a couple of months!!! Advice please!!! I'm just finding night times very hard and it gets to me when my formula feeding friends brag about their baby's sleeping 11 hours straight! How is that fair! I am so dedicated to breastfeeding her, not even expressing, so she is completely reliant on me which I love but all I want is more than an hour sleep at night at a time! My mum has said start introducing solids then she will be fuller so sleep longer, but it's too soon for that isn't it? She said she started me and my sister on solids at my daughters age. Any advice on getting her to sleep for longer much appreciated! (Sorry if Iv gone on a bit!) ??

I had this with my dd. It is the 4 month sleep regression and it is the pits! I feel your pain.
Please don't wean early because of this, it really won't help.
Your baby isn't waking through hunger, it is just that feeding is her sleep association. She is too young to sleep train so you will probably have to tough it out a little longer. Keeping the wake ups short and going to bed early are good things to do. Try and get her to nap any way you can. We sleep trained at 7 months and things are much much better now. Those first few months are so so tough. You are doing a great job

Firstly, ignore your friends. Have a read of this. I'm sure that your friends are lovely but it's true that some parents do bend the truth

Next, ignore the solids thing. Weaning actually made my children's sleep worse, not better. Leave it until 6 months. If you are that tired you really don't need to add weaning into the mix.

I'd tackle daytimes first. Could you feed her around 6 or 7 then get DH to get her changed and take her in the garden? You could have an extra hour in bed or use the time to shower and change. Getting her outside might help the sleep and it will give them some lovely bonding time

Once she's been up for an hour. Stick her in a pram/car/sling and get moving to try and get her to sleep. Don't worry if she doesn't sleep straightaway, she will get used to this being "downtime". Do this for at least 45 mins as this is the time of one sleep cycle.

If she dies go to sleep, then feed again when she wakes up and try to get her to sleep again, this time two hours after she wakes. By this time normal people may be up so perhaps you could use the awake time for things like swimming or playgroup.

After this "downtime" let her have 3 hours awake before you do it again.

Obviously you can adjust these times if you have a regular meeting or they don't suit your family

I could have written your post gg321! In fact, I came on here to start a thread myself but too tired to type it all out now. I'm afraid I can't offer any words of advice but here's some and !!

My DD is 5mo and has started waking every 40 mins-1 hour throughout the night. One night we got a stretch of 2 hour sleep but that seems to have been a one off. She is also EBF, but isn't hungry when she wakes, just sucks for a short while to get back to sleep. I also have to go to bed at about 7.30pm as she wakes and cries every time I try to move her to the 3 sided cot, so she's in my bed. It's a nightmare. I don't get to spend any time with my DH, and some nights don't get any tea if she's sleepy and wants feeding earlier.

If I hear one more person say she'll sleep better when she starts on solids I will get the RAGE!! How a few mouthfuls of carrot and yoghurt are going to get her to sleep for longer I don't know...

Anyway, so sorry for hijacking, I just wanted you to know that you're not alone, and I know how thoroughly shit it is. I'll be watching with interest in the hope that someone comes and gives some good advice!

The other thing my dh would do was to take her out for a walk sometimes in the evening. He always walked the same route and then left her in the hall while he watched to. When she woke he'd bring her upstairs to me. Not ideal but meant I got a couple of hours sleep early on

Hi. Your post sounds like my numerous posts not so long ago. My dd was exclusively bf. she woke every 45 mins (every sleep cycle) through the night from 4 months to about 2.5years. Sometimes she woke 4 times an hour sometimes she would miraculously sleep for 2 solid hours on a blue moon. We too co slept for my sanity. I nought I would die some days from lack of sleep or the worry of what I would do about it.

I didn't believe in cry it out and I tried everything else and failed. Solids didn't help my dd just wanted boob to re settle at night.

If I could go back in time to myself then, I would tell my new mother self, this baby is comfort sucking and is waking out of habit. If you hate it that much, grow some and let someone else settle her with a bottle at night while you sleep in another room for a few hours or alternatively just relax, go with the flow, don't worry, do not worry, enjoy every moment of this relatively fleeting spell when baby needs you most. Sleep with baby whenever you can and trust in the fact, the sleep cycles get longer even if you alter nothing in routine and just let baby lead the way and trust your instincts, eventually they sleep. (This is what I would tell myself btw)

The crux of breaking the wake ups is not letting her breast feed to sleep. The way they fall asleep is what they want when they come to the surface of the cycle and need that to resettle. However, at 4 months old, they are also maintaining and increasing your milk supply as they grow with night feeds which they need if you exclusively bf.

A baby is not a good baby just because it sleeps all night. (For your bragging friends) they are prob exaggerating and I bet if you really question them their babies do wake in the night.

Sleep will come. I still bf my co sleeping 3 yr old who sleeps most of the night often (sometimes all night occasionally). I gave up trying different things, followed her lead and without me doing anything she fell into 8-8am sleeps.

Wow! This sounds truly torturous. I think a massive issue is that she doesn't sleep in the day? An overtired baby is generally the cause of excessive night wakings! She should still be getting at least 4-5 hours in a 12 hour day at that age. The BF to sleep doesn't help as when she wakes she needs the same method of getting to sleep- the wakes would be less if she slept in the day. My son had never slept more than 20 minsat a time since he was born and had excessive night wakes, at 5 months we sleep trained him to get him to nap. It took four days to get him to do a nap 9-10.30, 12.30-2.30 and a 4-4.30 cat nap (rough times). The night waking stopped almost immediately. He woke a couple of times for a feed, then once and then stopped completely. My advice would be get her to sleep in the day.

Has my dd time travelled and moved in with you?

For us, we had to teach her to settle without the boob. By lying in cot and patting. Then not feeding each wakening. Over a few night you saw the feeds drop off. Feeding to sleep is great if it works, but did not work for us.

I agree with most of the advice above too . Take trouble to do naps, settle in cot better as a practice at settling and chance for you to get a kip.

Dd got a lot better quickly with this slept thru at 9 months . At 3 sleeps 11 hours a night and has a 2-3 hour nap and has done so sine about 16 months. She loves sleep!!!! There is hope!!!!!

Lots of good advice Thankyou. Unfortunately I can't get the husband to do anything with her in the evenings as he works until late. I think I need her to nap better in the day then hopefully have less night wakings. Last night she only woke 5 times which was fine and she did a couple of 2 hour sleeps, but it's just some nights when she is up 10 times its hard! I know it's good for keeping milk supply for EBF but 10 times, the monkey! I don't mind feeding her back to sleep when she does wake as that's the only way she knows how to sleep and I don't expect her to sleep for long as she is young and I didn't have a baby to have an easy time, I would do anything for her just wish occassionally she could do her 3/4 hour sleeps like she used to just so I can slightly recharge my batteries for the long nights! I know it won't last forever and I am enjoying this time when she's is completely reliant on me but just wanted to know if there were any miracle solutions to getting less wake ups and just to hear that I'm not alone and I haven't got a rare baby with insomnia!! I think some of my friends do bend the truth a bit with how well their babies sleep!

So I have decided need to tackle better daytime naps....she will only fall asleep if we are walking in sling or pram or driving in car but as soon as we stop and get back home she wakes. At home she will sleep if I'm holding her but I have to be walking around the whole time. Ideally she needs to have 4-5 hours of sleep in 12 hour day, for this to happen is have to be driving, or walking for these 4-5 hours for this to happen! Is this normal? How can I get her to sleep at home or even just stay asleep for when we get home? If not I guess I'll just have to go for some long walks and drives until she gets more used to sleeping in the day!

At that age with my dd I popped her in the pram at the first sign of tiredness and went out for a walk. I spent about a week just making sure she napped. It meant going out three times a day! But it really helped her nap better, she would stay asleep after getting home as long as she was deeply asleep enough.
I do still find that naps come and go, we are in a bad napping phase at the moment but I think we have teething to thank for that

We've just come out the other side of the four month sleep regression. Woke every 30-1 min day and night. EBB. Hang in there. X

Lasted two weeks :/

Hmm my EBF baby started this at about 3.5 months, and I'm afraid to say it carried on until I did a bit of sleep training when he was older, which I hadn't planned to do but I was on my own with him and could feel myself starting to get very run down and unwell from only sleeping an hour at a time for months.

He took to it straight away though and was sleeping in much longer stretches after one night, thankfully. It was just habit, noticing my nipple wasn't in his mouth would wake him up and he'd start shouting. Some times it would be as often as 30 mins!

I introduced solids at 5 months and it honestly made no difference to his sleep at all. They eat so little when they first start anyway.

I would be surprised if formula would help at this stage either, some BF babies night wean themselves at 4 months and even newborns don't usually wake every hour from hunger, so since she won't be waking up because she's hungry then filling her up more probably won't make a difference if you see what I mean.

My baby did this from 3.5 months until last week (just 6 months). I have read every forum and website going on sleep over the last few months!

Other posters are right, daytime sleep helps nighttime sleep, but the reverse is also true. Your baby will be much happier and you will have an easier time entertaining her in the day if she is well napped though, so I suggest you start with daytime naps.

Every baby is different, but your baby probably doesn't need 4-5 hours of naps, although some babies this age will sleep that long, for some this may be too much and be detrimental to nighttime sleep. Most babies this age probably get closer to 2-3 hours worth of naps in total over 3 naps. Try the first nap after baby has been awake for 2 hours, then the next nap 2-3 hours after waking from the first nap. The final nap should be the shortest.
So for a baby waking at 7am, try naps around 9-10am, 12-1pm, 4-4.30pm. Essentially try to monitor your baby and take cues from your baby as to when she starts getting tired (grizzly, staring, rubbing eyes etc) and work with her natural pattern. For most babies this ages, they will start to get tired around 2 hours after they last woke.

To get your baby to nap, do whatever you need to do for a period of time - it make take a week or two of walking your baby in the pram at these times, but hopefully they will become more of a habit after a period of doing this and your baby may sleep once the pram stops and eventually out of the pram.

Introducing solids has not made a difference for us. We started early at 5.5 months in the hope it would help sleep, but it didn't. I think most babies take such small amounts of solids initially that it is not going to suddenly help sleep.

The reason your baby is waking so much is the 4 month sleep regression and the association of feeding with sleep. Babies have sleep cycles of around 40 mins - so they enter lighter sleep every 40 mins where they are easily woken. A baby who is used to feeding to sleep, will want to do this everytime they wake! Your baby needs to learn to go to sleep without being fed, which is a big challenge and it took a lot of work for us and we are still working on it! From what I've read, the most important one to break is the bedtime feed to sleep. Tackling middle of the night feeds can come later and naps after this.
To start with, use anything possible to help baby settle without feeding to sleep. That may be cuddling, white noise, patting baby whilst saying shush etc. Maybe avoid rocking as you are likely to find this association harder than feeding to sleep. For us a dummy worked. I know we will have to wean this at some point, but I struggled to sleep with baby in my bed for fear of rolling on him and so was not getting any sleep. We have seen quite a bit of progress since we stopped letting baby feed to sleep at bedtime. After a month of working on this, we managed to get him to happily go into his cot awake and put himself to sleep. We are now working on the night wakings, but these have reduced from every 30-45 mins to every few hours. In our case I know our baby is not waking hungry either as he only sucks for a few minutes then sleeps and he won't feed when he first wakes as he isn't hungry! My friend had success with dropping night feeds by only offering a bottle at night. This might be our next step. Personally I feel offering an expressed bottle will be better for our baby if it gets me the sleep I need so that I can be a better mother in the day, rather than tired, irritable zombie mother.

Good luck!

Just realise that reads as if we have only sorted naps last week, we sorted naps first, just over a month ago. They are not perfect, but they are soon much better. I get about 45 mins at 9am, 1 hour around lunchtime, 30 mins 4.30pm ish, though now our baby is 6 months, I think he will be ready to drop this late one soon.

Missingcaffeine you may lots of sense and I know if she didnt have to feed to sleep i wouldn't have to feed her each time she woke at night but I really don't mind feeding her when she wakes while she's so young as its only a few minutes and it does help to keep my milk supply strong for her but I just want her to wake a little less. I know one day though she will need to learn how to settle herself but I cannot imagine how I would get her to sleep without feeding, as I don't want to use a dummy. Do you just use the dummy at night or does he want/need it in the day too? I need to tackle day time naps first so she doesn't wake every hour, that is my problem, the feeding to sleep works for me as its quick and easy. But I get what you are saying, teach her to self settle first then she won't need me to wake for her to go back to sleep, but surely shed need some sort of settling even if it wasn't feeding, patting, shushing so if I am awake to get her to sleep again doing this I may aswell be awake and feeding her, doing her good and my milk supply, do u get what I'm saying. Surely the primary problem to tackle first is the lack of sleep in the day causing the frequent night wakes as the frequency is my problem not the fact that she needs to be feed to sleep. Hope I make sense

Personally, I think the frequent waking is more likely to be due to sleep association with feeding rather than lack of daytime naps. I'm no expert though, as this is my first baby, I've just read a lot of books and forums on the matter and I can tell you what has worked for us, but I realise every baby is different.

I think if you get your baby napping well, it will be better for your baby and you will have a happier baby, but I'm not sure it will stop your baby waking so frequently at night. My baby was sleeping well in the day once we worked on regular nap times, but was still waking every 30mins-2 hours at night.

What reduced the night waking for us was not feeding to sleep at bedtime. This was achieved by making bedtime half an hour earlier so that baby was not so upset and overtired at bedtime. This is where better naps in the day might make not feeding to sleep more achievable. There are still days when our baby falls asleep feeding at bedtime, but I am usually able to rouse him a little so that he is aware he is being put in his cot, which was not so easy when his bedtime was later. We now have a lovely hour long bedtime routine from 6-7pm (play with nappy off, massage, bath, feed, story, sometimes songs).

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that beyond 12 weeks, your milk supply should be pretty stable apart from during growth spurts when your baby may want to feed more to boost it. I understand you are happy to feed your baby in the night, just not so often - I felt exactly the same - but after 2 months of waking every 30mins to 2 hours, I felt that something needed to be done. I am also aware from everything I've read, that habits can be harder to break the older the baby is, and I really don't want my baby feeding all night when I have to return to work in 6 months. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to reduce the frequency of night feeds other than breaking the 'feed to sleep' habit at bedtime.

I wasn't keen to introduce a dummy, but our baby had reflux, and I read that a dummy really helps with this. We introduced it around 4 months, as prior to this our baby refused it, but it was the best thing we ever did as it really helped our baby to calm when distressed with pain from reflux, but I realise your situation is different. I have since found the dummy is also useful to help me not to feed to sleep - which was not why we introduced it, but an added bonus. Our baby can settle without the dummy, but it is really useful at calming him quickly when he is really upset. If you feel you can find another way of getting through this and you're not at breaking point, then maybe a dummy isn't the best idea as babies can become quite attached and this may end up being another problem later on. For me, it was the lesser of two evils, as I was going insane with the lack of sleep and it was definitely affecting my ability to be a good mum.

Sympathies! I'm just out of the 4 month sleep regression. Bang on 4 mths, DS1 went on a nursing strike and started waking every hour. I was only bfing twice in the night at that point so it was mainly the dummy he was waking for. Does your baby take a dummy? Might help to wean off the boob.

I found quite early on that mums exaggerate their babies sleeping. At one of our NCT meets ups, two mums said their babies slept 7 until 7 when I was having all the issues. Transpires their babies were in their crib for 12 hours but still waking 3/4 times in the night!

And yes, better daytime sleep will help. Don't get worried if your baby isn't sleeping 4/5 hrs during the day, not all babies do. Mine is 7 months and since he was 6 wks has only ever napped 30 mins at a time in the day.ive tried everything and we're still on 4 naps of 30 mins a day. So 2 hrs in total. And he's now sleeping 12 hrs at night solidly, so for me, the day time sleep hasn't affected his sleeping patterns at night.

Just read your post about not wanting to use a dummy. To be honest, 4 months might be a little late to introduce one but don't dismiss it because they can work brilliantly. I was against them until I had a baby that clung to my boob 24/7 and I couldn't walk to the shops without whipping them out. My boy now settles himself to sleep at night by himself without it (and during the night) but I still use for daytime naps. As soon as he shows signs of tiredness in the day, I pick up him up, put him in his cot awake, put dummy in, walk out, 5 mins later asleep. Some babies need to suck to get to sleep, sounds one you have one. They grow out of it.

so it sounds like it's not the daytime naps but the needing boob in her mouth! Arrrrgh, I know I dummy would probably help, I haven't tried but got this far without one, I'd hate to give in now, how do people manage without!? I could do this hourly waking for a bit longer, it's been for about 6 weeks already, will she not just grow out of it? If she doesn't how on earth will I manage when I want to put her in her own room!? Atm when she wakes, I simply roll over, put boob in and few mins later roll back when she's asleep again, but I'm so worried about even getting her to sleep in the first place in her cot, I guess I feed her to sleep in the chair in her room then gently place her in cot but she will only ever fall asleep in my arms but if I put her down she ALWAYS wakes up! So I think the whole transfer to own room is what's really worrying me, I suppose I can handle the night wakings for now but I know that's the problem I need to solve for this to be any sort of success! It's 5am now and she's been awake 5 times already, she's asleep now but I'm upset about it all and now can't sleep myself! I really really don't want to give her a dummy, I know lots of you will say don't be so proud and just use one but I really don't want to so how can I do this without, some people must manage without? I can get her to sleep in day (eventually!) but always only if she's moving, holding and rocking, pram, swing or sling, but have to constantly move and if I stop 75% of the time she will wake up, only very occasionally she stays asleep. I just cannot imagine how to get her to sleep and lay her in the bed with out waking. If I lay her in the bed first then just shush and rub/pat her she would just cry until getting boob I know she would!

No it was 3am not 5am and been awake 5 times already! (Tired brain!)

Hi OP! I'm pretty much in the same boat as you!
Have a 5.5 month DD sleeping on me right now!
I've been up since 3am - actually went to bed at 7.45pm last night as was sooooo tired!
DH let DD sleep on him until midnight though she woke twice in that time for a feed (well more of a suckle for 5 mins! ).
We then brought her into our bed and she woke every hour.
In the end I came downstairs with her so DH could get some sleep.
I suspect I'll head back up to bed myself about 5.30ish to try to get an extra hour before DS (2) wakes up!!
All a bit of a nightmare really!
Too tired to even think about advice sorry but just wanted to let you know you're not the only one & I sympathise!

Oh and we don't use a dummy either and really don't want to.
Plus her daytime naps are unpredictable - she generally has a 30 min nap about 2 hours after starting her day, then if we're lucky she might have a 1.5-2 hour nap over lunch time, then maybe another 30 min nap late afternoon / early evening.
These are either on me, in the car (as long as it keeps moving!) or in her pram. I can sometimes successfully rock her to sleep in her pram but not always.
White noise used to work but not since she hit 4 months & the darn sleep regression kicked in!!

Sounds just like your in the same boat, or a bit worse with 2! Knowing I'm not alone is just as good as advice for solving the problem!!

Thing with a dummy is you are up every 45 mins shoving the thing back in till they are old enough to do it themselves. I am a dummy martyr!