Baby waking herself up

[110APiccadilly]

DD is 11 weeks old and for the past few weeks hasn't been a bad sleeper. She's generally fed/cuddled to sleep, then goes down in her Moses basket no problem. We were getting two or three hour stretches - occasionally four, which was fine for her age and size (she was born small and is now on the second percentile).

However, she's started trying to stick her thumb/ fingers in her mouth during the day. Tonight, she's been trying to do this in her sleep (I think whenever her sleep is disturbed by anything). The problem is that she doesn't have the motor control, ends up hitting herself in the face and waking up before she would have done - I've been up hourly since 1.

I don't really want to start swaddling at this point, two and a half months in. Is there anything else I can do?

To note, I'm not willing to go against any part of the safe sleeping guidance, even slightly, as there's been a cot death in the extended family in the past. That includes not being willing to co sleep with a low birth weight baby.

Have you tried a dummy? This really helped my daughter sleep. She was a week overdue though and 8lb+ baby. I found my son who was week early and only 7lb, took an extra month or so to settle. When he started taking on enough milk during the day he started sleeping through. He was around 3 months. Might just be a matter of time until she grows enough not to be hungry in the night. My daughter used to take a dream feed as we went to bed. That could be worth a try. My son at 22 months still moves around a lot but only stirs a little if he hits the side of his cot etc. Good luck xx

Sometimes disturbed sleep coincides with growth spurts/developmental leaps and tends to get better after a few weeks... until the next one! So this could just be one of those occasions as your baby is around the 12 week mark.

As the weather got colder I noticed my baby had more disturbed sleep. I read somewhere about using a hot water bottle to warm their cot before they went to bed. Obviously, in line with safe sleeping guidelines you shouldn't leave the hot water bottle in with them, it should not make the cot too hot, and you should monitor to ensure overheating does not happen. But, I found that this really helped to settle our little one who is now sleeping a bit better!

We feed to sleep too, and in my sleep deprived state I sometimes put our baby down before she's entered a deep sleep. Queue putting fingers in mouth, waking up and crying. You could try holding onto your baby for another 10minutes longer and seeing if that makes any difference in their waking.

You probably do all of this anyway, but I found the older my baby got the more alert they were and therefore more easily disturbed by things such as light/noise. We now put her in a dark room and sometimes use white noise which we didn't have to do when she was a newborn.

Good luck!

Thanks both, some useful suggestions there, will see if anything makes a difference!