Please help - I'm knackered!!

[newmum7369]

DS1 is 13 weeks old and from day 1 has been a great sleeper. Went down at about 9:30pm, woke around 3am for a feed, back to bed and then awake again at 6:30am. At around 2 months he dropped the night feed and was waking at around 5:30am, which then became his first feed of the day. I managed to stretch this out until 7am. All great.

For about the last 2 weeks he has been very disturbed throughout the night. He makes crying noises (but not full on crying) every 1-2 hours. I put his dummy in, put Ewan the sheep on and he resettles, but he'll be awake again in an hour or so, sometimes even only 2o minutes later! That goes on throughout the night, so I never get more than 2 hours at a time.

He's primarily formula fed with as much expressed breast milk as I can managed throughout the day. Always formula before bed and we make sure he has something before he goes down.

I wondered whether it's the 4 month sleep regression come early? Anyone got any ideas?!?!

Mine always had loads more than the recommended amount on the formula tin. I assume those recommendations are for your "average" baby, ie 50th centile. So it's to be expected that a larger baby is going to need more calories.

I say "full feeds" because previously when mentioning 2 hourly feeds I have bedn pulled up on the (incorrect) assumption that all 2 hourly feeds do is make baby have smaller, snacky feeds. Someone once suggested its better to have big gaps between feeds because then their baby has a full feed each time. So since then I've bedn clear that when I say 2 hourly feeds, I don't mean 2-3oz every 2h instead of 6-7oz every 4h. What I mean is a full 6oz (or whatever) feed every 2 hours. Sometimes every 90 minutes.

If your baby was sleeping once the 2 hour limit was up would you wake for a feed or leave to sleep?

I favour EASY (which means feeding upon waking up, then having awake time then a sleep) and knew baby at this age might have short naps.

The only by-the-clock timing i would be watching is awake time. I'd go no longer than 90m awake, closer to 1h from waking up I'd be getting baby back to sleep.

So by watching awake time and feeding upon waking, you just follow baby's lead.

E - Eat. Full feed upon waking up
A - Activity time. 60-90m from waking, earlier if previous nap was short or any crying (crying will always be tiredness, because feed already given)

• Sleep. Naps nap be short, 30-45 mins are nothing to worry about. Could equally be longer and over 90m. Back to E for Eat when waking.

Y - You time while baby sleeps.

@FATEdestiny thank you so much, that makes so much sense. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond, fingers crossed for a few hours sleep tonight!

Hi, me again!

No improvement from earlier this month, if anything things have got consistently worse. I've been working on improving DS's daytime naps in the hope that a bit more routine might help the night's. He now takes regular naps in his cot with me putting him down drowsy but awake as often as possible. I use the same white noise and story to alert him to the fact that it's time for sleep and respond as soon as he shows signs of tiredness. On average I'd say he's awake for an hour then asleep for 45 minutes fairly routinely.

Then comes evening and he looks to go down around 7:30. Typically he then wakes at 1:30, then again at 4:00, usually for a feed. From 4:00 he then catnaps for approx. 20 minute stints, although I usually end up having to bring him into our bed and co-sleep because often he won't resettle at all in his cot.

Feed wise he's on almost all formula with a few ounces of expressed milk a day. Yesterday I tried some hungry baby formula to see if that helped, so he had 7oz before bed, 7oz at 1:30 and 3oz at 4:00. Hasn't made any difference. Fed as normal throughout the day yesterday.

He's on the 91st centile and weighed 16lbs 8oz when he was last weighed at 14 weeks of that makes any difference. He's 16 weeks now.

Do you still think this is just a phase which I need to ride out or am I doing something wrong? I think he seems to be taking quite big feeds during the night which makes me think he's not getting enough calories during the day, but he almost drains 7oz bottles 3 or 4 times a day so I'm not sure how I can get more into him. I know hungry baby formula probably isn't the best thing to resort too because I know it can make hen constipated (he's just done a massive poo, so hopefully avoided that one!) but I just wondered whether that might fill him up. Any thoughts?

Sorry for the typos, I'm quite sleepy!