Sleep worse 11/12 weeks

[Remy87]

Hi MN hive mind! Just looking for experiences really. I am fully aware my baby was giving me great sleep early on - 5 hours from about 5 weeks which increased to around 7 until 11.5 weeks.
He now won’t do more than 3 hour stretches in a row and I’m at a loss as to why. Also fully aware babies should wake during night etc but it’s frustrating that I know he can go longer!
Have tried bringing bedtime earlier, tried adjusting his last period of wake time but nothing seems to be working. Any ideas? Surely a growth spurt wouldn’t last this long (almost 2 weeks)?
Did anyone have this and it improve, or is this my normal now? Thank you!

Unfortunately sleep can go down as well as up! As babies get less tired or more hungry they might wake more. Developmental phases can also cause wake ups, so can teething, colds etc.

Sometimes babies can’t link sleep cycles without their particular sleep association like being fed or rocked back to sleep but that usually causes wake ups every 45-60 min. As he’s still sleeping 3 hours in a row it’s unlikely to be a sleep association issue.

Try to ride it out and hopefully it will pass

Sleep is not linear. Newborn babies have 2 stages to their sleep. At around 3/4 months their sleep shifts to be more like adults in terms of lighter/deep sleep. This sometimes means they wake more in those lighter periods and need adult help to get back to sleep.

Yeah my baby was exactly the same. 7-8 hour stretches of sleep between weeks 7 and 9. At 10/11 weeks it went downhill, waking every 2-3 hours. It stayed that way until we sleep trained another 3 months later.

At 5/6 months you can do some sleep training but until then they are too young to understand so you are stuck with whatever they want to do.

It’s reassuring to hear someone else went through the same thing. Sounds like there’s a rough patch around that age for a lot of babies. Fingers crossed we all make it to that 5/6 month mark with a little more sleep sanity!

thanks everyone for input! I hope not like this for another 3 months!! What training did you do @123EndOfRope67?

haha I know! Fingers crossed….

@Remy87 yeah it was a horrible period. I can't even count the number of people who expected us to be super happy and loving life with our baby at 12 weeks, instead we were total zombies. Months 2-5 were worse than the newborn period. He's 8 months now and mentally I don't think I've recovered yet. Like genuinely, traumatised. Some nights he'd wake every hour expecting a cuddle and a rock each time. My back kept freezing up (he was a big baby) and DH had to take a few days off work as I couldn't do the rocking for a day or so.

We sort of Ferberized him around 5.5 months. Tried gentle methods but they stimulated him and/or upset him more. Left him to it one night and after 20 minutes of crying and 2 check ins, he started sleeping through very happily. I still feed him when he wakes but that's only once a night now (he sleeps 7-7, with one feed around 3am), he was waking 3 times for feeds but he dropped the first 2 around 6 months, a couple of weeks after sleep training.

With Ferber / cry it out, IF you want to try them, don't wait too long past 6 months. At 9/10 months they get smarter and bigger and sleep training is a whole different kettle of fish.

Sounds like a sleep regression, we had many of these until about 12 months old. We would have a great period of sleep and then a rough patch and now unless there is a good reason like sickness or teething, then my DD will sleep through average 12 hours a night. We never sleep trained, just pushed through the rough periods.

Teething usually starts about 3 months old, so it could be teething pain causing wake ups.

Normal, and he's only 3 months. So, so tiny. Are you breastfeeding? Around this age babies can become very interested in the world around them and don't feed as much in the day because they are so nosy ... so they wake more at night.

Yes breastfeeding which is also annoying as my boobs got used to not being needed and are now confused again!

This is good to know as tbh my instinct is to ride it out and just hope he improves as he gets older!

This is babies Im afraid! Sleep changes all the time in the first couple of years, as they grow, develop, learn. There’s no evidence sleep trained babies sleep any better on average either.

This might help, understanding what’s going on is the main thing.
sarahockwell-smith.com/2017/07/24/the-rollercoaster-of-real-baby-sleep/

Thank you for sharing - ha the first sentence :D