12 week old waking hourly

[burritofan]

Please don't tell me to enjoy the cuddles. My DD, 12 weeks tomorrow, has been waking hourly since 8pm. This happened 4 nights ago too. The other nights in the past fortnight she's managed a max of 2.5 hours at the beginning of the night, with 1.5 or hourly wake ups thereafter. I'm so tired.

Sometimes she's FTS, sometimes rocked, at the start of the night. Can 4 month regression kick in this early? Can a feed to sleep habit? Would a dummy help? She's previously rejected them. She has a posterior TT though which we plan to get snipped.

She doesn't cry when she wakes, she just wakes. We cosleep and she has a sidecar crib. Room is dark with white noise. Haven't yet conquered lying down to feed.

You say she doesn't cry when she wakes - what happens if you just leave her? Does it eventually escalate into crying?

Depends! First wake-up she was merrily practising side rolling around the crib but then began grizzling. Towards the end of the night, when she was knackered, it went from "surprised silence at being awake … grizzling … crying" fairly quickly. If I pick up at crying but don't immediately feed, it becomes a howl.

Sometimes I think she really needs the feed – she was a 3-times-a-night girl recently – because she goes for it; others it's quickly clear it's a comfort to sleep thing. But I can't tell til she's latched, and I don't want to leave a hungry baby to cry.

I try to resettle before she fully wakes with a bum wobble, or ignoring and hope she doesn't wake (neither works); but when I don't feed back to sleep immediately it always escalated to crying, then too upset to feed, then pacing around the flat rocking her while she owl-eyes everything and thinks it's party time.

At 3 months it’s probably just hunger