Does anyone else now dread going to bed, knowing what lies ahead?

[velveteenwabbit]

I have a beautiful DD who is 4 and a half months old. I know she is still tiny and I'm not expecting her to be sleeping through the night yet (despite loads of my NCT group saying theirs do!)

However - every night is a total lottery and now my nerves are so shredded that I barely sleep even when she's sleeping. The smallest grunt from her wakes me up and I'm on edge lying there in the dark waiting for her to wake up (and be awake for 2 hours).

A typical night at the moment is:
6.30pm - goes to bed (she's generally good at bedtime)
10pm - dream feed
12.30am - wakes for a feed and then stays awake for an hour and a half
4am - wakes and resettles with dummy
5am - wakes and resettles with dummy
5.30am/6am - awake for the day

Is this normal for her age? I'm going to bed after her dream feed and on a typical night I'm getting between 2 and 3 hours sleep as it's so broken.

Goodness, my son had to yell the place down for me to wake up. he is 36 now and didn't die so it all turned out ok.

She is sleeping for quite a long stretch from 6.30 to 12.30, that's not bad. At that age I put my DC down for the night when I was going to bed myself, at about 11/11.30. Could you try that?

I used to sleep 8pm - midnight with dh doing a dream feed and those four hours made all the difference to how I felt later in the night.
Also used white noise in the night for both of us to get off again at 3/4am.

I'd phase out the dream feed if she's waking 2.5 hours later anyway - it doesn't seem to be really doing much. And feed at 4 instead as you might get a longer stretch afterwards when she goes back down.

Mine is nearly 5 months and I know your pain. Switching dream feed to formula helped for us but that's not relevant for you. I would suggest putting baby in their own room - it'll take a couple of nights to get used to the monitor but it'll filter out the grunts. And ear plugs too. We are stuck on wake ups around 2 and 5 but I'm hoping he'll grow out of those in the next couple of months. We'll see.

Also used to go to bed much earlier as museum says.

I've had two good sleepers (so far! DS2 is 3.5 months - early days)!

One thing I've learned for a good night's sleep is don't be too quick to get them up to feed. If they wake to chat/grunt/shuffle about, try and ignore it. Chances are she will go back to sleep. If she's over 11lb then she's capable of sleeping for a 6 hour stretch without milk. I second ear plugs. It is hard, I was the same with my DS1 for the first few weeks, especially as he was such a noisy sleeper anyway.

You could also put her in her own room. I know the guidelines say 6 months but if you look at stats for SIDS, they are very low anyway, but drop significantly after 4 months. Sharing a room is just one of several guidelines, so if she was born at term, non smoking household etc, then putting her in her own room at 4.5 months won't do her any harm.

I felt this with my first dc- just lying awake trying desperately to sleep before the next waking. The more I wanted sleep the more difficult it got to drift off. When we put her into her own room at 4.5 months I had the best night sleep I had had in months, even with the night wakings. I used to go to bed as soon as my dh came in from work (so 6ish) and have a solid sleep then (he would be downstairs with the baby), then I would do the night wakings because dc was bf. I too used to dread night times and I never believed it when people would say it would get better, but it does, I promise, just hang in there.

I would drop the dream feed and go to bed a bit earlier - say 8pm. Then you will at least get a decent chunk of sleep at the start of the night. I would also consider giving a feed at the 4am wake in the hope that a full tummy might stop the 5am wake.

You could also consider making bedtime a bit later. At that age my son was going to bed at 7pm and waking at 5:30am so we shifted him to an 8pm bedtime and he would sleep until 6:30 am instead which was a bit easier for me!

Other things to try are a blackout blind if the room is not completely dark. I bought a gro anywhere one for about £20 which is great. I also second the suggestion for earplugs - you will hear him crying. And if you are absolutely shattered just go to bed with him at 6:30. It’s not ideal as a long term solution I know but getting a few nights of decent sleep can make such a difference to your state of mind.