3 month old night feeds

[TiredMummyNov16]

My 3 month old wakes twice during the night (1/2am) and 5am. At both wake ups she barely touches her milk. The first wake up she goes back down quickly, the second we rarely get her back to sleep until 7am which I believe then messes up our day in regards to feeds etc.

As she is barely touching the milk at 1am do you think she is just waking out of habit?

I have no routine for her other than her bath,bottle,bed around 7.30. She has started self settling for bedtime and 1am and doesn't use a dummy. I'm really struggling to read her signs for day time naps - but I think this is because she starts the day off over tired from not going back down at 5amish. Please can anyone help? Is 3 months to old for a nap schedule and how long should she be napping?

I'm upset as everywhere I have read that at 3 months they should start sleeping through but she shows no signs of this. I feel like I'm doing a bad job and feel constantly upset from being so tired.

Forgot to add she doesn't self settle for naps - she just seems constantly over tired and won't nap for long unless I really bounce her around etc. I have questioned whether she is going through sleep regression as she used to sleep a lot easier.

I'm envious of how well she sleeps! DS is 4 months. Goes to sleep 8-9ish, wakes 11-12, 2-3, 5-6 feeding 30min each time, up for the day about 7 but sometimes stays awake from the 5am wake up. Through the day he might nap between 5 and 30 mins at a time at say 10am, 2, 4pm.

Obviously formula vs breastfeeding on demand will contribute to DS being more chaotic than your DD but your DD sounds like she is doing well! :-)

PS re how long should she nap, I go by the Dr Jolly approach of "the amount of sleep a child needs is highly variable but is almost always less than the parents'". DS can't self settle in daylight hours at all.

Doctors consider 'sleeping though the night' to mean sleeping for at least a 5 hour stretch in one go. So your little one is already doing that. You're doing a great job! It's absolutely normal for them to be waking up in the night at that age.

My nearly 3 month old is exactly like yours parents, except worse at the moment as she's not well! She wakes me at 5 with thunderous farts but sometimes I can get her to stay in bed til 7.

Oh yeah, the thunderous farts... DS will often wake himself up farting about an hour after he's gone to sleep. Re-reading what I wrote above I now realise that means i am awake almost every hour through the night. I think i may have been too tired to process this indo previously!

Ahh thank you you have made me feel a lot better :) when you go on these websites and it says 'they will start doing 10-11 hours at night' blah blah it gets me down. I love being a mum but it's amazing what a full nights sleep can do for your mood and energy....

I also find it hard to work out her naps as we do different things each day, out and about etc. But I don't want to sit in the house all day just to get her in the perfect routine, that's not nice for either of us! What age did you all see your little ones settling down into a routine?

I know their is various methods like GF routine but I just don't feel like it's realistic x

Btw now you mention it - when she wakes at 5ish she does wake up trumping!! Maybe that's why she is stirring as she doesn't seem interested in milk ha. She never used to fart that much she has only real recently started doing that!

5am seems to be optimal farting time! We have no routine really other than she normally goes to bed 7/7.30 so have a little bed time routine. Then she's normally up at 6 or 7 atm. No real routine for naps though she normally only has an hour or hour and half awake time before needing a nap and naps vary considerably in length!

Sounds similar to us! My little one goes to sleep around 9pm (can't get him to stay down any earlier!) he then wakes twice, once around 1am and once around 4am then sleeps to about 7am. He breastfeeds for about 15 mins each times and then drifts back to sleep. I don't feel that he's close to sleeping through the night!!

In terms of daytime naps...he manages anywhere from 3-6 hours in 45 min-1.5h blocks. It's unpredicatable though and we have no routine. He has all his naps in the sling on me in the daytime. If I try and set him down for daytime naps he only gets 3 x 30min naps and he gets really tired and difficult to put down! I know the sling isn't ideal but it's working for us at the moment!

My baby is 11 months and wakes up every two hours still. Count your blessings!

TiredMummyNov16 just re naps/outings through the day - I treat them casually - if DS naps while we walk to/from somewhere, great; if not, well he'll probably have a feed and a nap while we're there. As much as possible, I don't go anywhere that he can't feed or nap. Until he gets a bit older (i.e. more likely to fight sleepiness) there's probably no great need to have him nap at specific times. For the moment he probably sleeps better at night because he hasn't had massive sleeps during the day.

However, it's worth keeping an eye on the potential for overstimulation, as beyond a certain point a kid will get wide-eyed, jumpy and increasingly hysterical if they're kept awake too much or stuck in noisy places when they'd rather be asleep. DS is about as unsociable and easily overstimulated as I am, so we spend a lot of time walking round the local streets & Botanic Gardens, and as little time in shops/supermarkets/loud cafes as possible. When meeting friends we get a takeaway coffee & walk round the gardens. We go to one mother and baby group (quiet and relaxed) and to evensong at our local cathedral (but we always leave before the organ voluntary, as it's likely to be too loud). Otherwise we enjoy the peace at home!

It sounds like you're doing really well. You're going to be tired at this point in the marathon, but it will get better.