Help Needed! Night Wakings

[Weegle]

Hi there - I'm new here and hope someone might be able to help my sleep deprivation!

LO is 6 months - was fab sleeper from birth. He's a very big baby and slept 8 hour stretches straight from hospital! Slept 7-7 from 8-20 weeks and then bam, it all went wrong. For weeks he would wake once in the night and I could resettle him within 45 min (sometimes with bottle sometimes not), and that was happening approx 4 out of 7 nights. Then the last 10 days he has woken every night anytime between midnight and 4am for 3 hours!!!!! To begin with he is happy and just gurgling cooing, then he gets grumpy. To be honest when he gets grumpy it's a good sign because then I can work on getting him back to sleep but still this is taking an hour or so once he reaches this stage. Does anyone have any advice? What can I do? I feel like we've gone backwards and am feeling so down as I don't know what I can do to get him back on track. Our days are now a mess because he's waking at all sorts of different times and sometimes not hungry for his breakfast because I had to feed him to get him back to sleep. Originally I thought teeth/just a phase but it's been about 10 weeks now and just seems to be getting worse. I don't even see how I could do controlled crying because he's not crying for the first hour or two! I'm shattered, does anyone have any advice on what I can try?

when you say your days are now a mess do you mean they aren't the same routine as when he was 3 months old? cos there is really a vast difference from a 3 month old to a 6 month old. your routine will change constantly.

how much sleep does he have in the day?

is he actually waking through hunger?

I mean his routine is a mess because sometimes he wakes at 6.30 and sometimes at 9am depending on how long he's been up in the night. I have gradually shifted his routine as he's got older, and that's all been fine, it's definitely very different from when he was 3 months. I'm pretty flexible about it, not rigid to the clock but if he refuses breakfast because he's not hungry from a night feed he then can't make it till lunch etc etc. I don't mind it except I end up flailing about a bit not sure when I should next try to feed him etc, especially as I have to bulk his calories in to solids as he has a problem taking the amount of milk needed for his size.

I don't think he is waking from hunger, no. If he's hungry for a feed he will take anything between 11-15oz (yes he is an enourmous baby!) whereas when he wakes in the night he will usually only take maybe 5oz - I only really feed him in the night out of desperation knowing he will get dozey on the bottle.

He doesn't sleep well in the day really - never has. He has 3 or 4 half hour naps, you could set a clock to him! I spent a month desperately trying every technique under the sun to extend these and we just both ended up miserable. Since accepting that's just how he is we've both been happier. It didn't matter when he was sleeping 12 hours straight at night!

my dd is 7 months. if she has a bad night and wakes a lot, which is normally when she's teething, then i feed her back to sleep. in the morning i know she won't want breakfast so i don't give her any. i just offer milk after she's up and dressed. then i would pull lunch forward a bit.

i think you have to take each day as it comes. on a good night she wakes at midnight for a quick feed and then at 6 am she's awake and up for the day. recently we've had some bad nights, just as a tooth has appeared. then she wakes every two hours out of discomfort. the best thing i can do for her then is give her a breastfeed. she soon goes back to sleep. yes it means she'll eat less in the morning but it doesn't matter.

Is he teething? I found that these night wakings comes in cycles, around 9 days each, and usually for me with teething.

I don't know?? I'm finding it all so confusing. He certainly seems to have all the symptoms, and I sometimes wonder if he seems to suffer "badly" but could that really account for the last 2 months of disturbed nights? It certainly coincides with since he got his first two teeth, he cut a third a fortnight ago and I think more are on their way. Last night he woke twice and each time took a few hours to get back down. He's shattered today, I just don't know what to do. Starting to get a little desperate as I'm soooooooo tired! It just seems to be getting worse and worse.

Also I'm not sure if it's teething because he spends the first 45 min - 1.5 hours of being awake being happy and babbling to himself. It's then after a good while he gets grumpy which to me is a good sign because I can then work on getting him sleepy! I thought if it was teething he would wake in pain?

My ds also doesn't have too much bother when he is teething, but is still wakes him up. I started giving him bonjela (the original kind not the teething gel) and it worked a charm for him to settle back again, my dentist said that once they start teething it will feel like it never ends until they have them all!