daytime sleep advice?

[katherine2008]

hi, dd is 10 weeks old (just) and suffers from quite bad colic - enough to wake her frequently and to make the hours of 6-10pm often quite unpleasant - crying, refusal to be put down etc. she sleeps in her cot after her morning feed (7am) but then tends to sleep in her pram until 10pm feed and sleep. should i be trying to put her in her cot after other feeds? and should i put her in her grobag - if so should i take clothes off her... help?!! thank you!

I have 3 dcs and all of them have screamy evenings if they haven't had enough day time sleep. I found that unless they had naps in the dark they woke up at the slightest noise or movement and would then get overtired. How much sleep is she getting in total?
One thing I have found useful with all 3 is to work out a wakeful window after which they get overtired. If you notice how long they are happily awake for first thing before the yawn and then make sure they don't exceed that time during the day then they can't get overtired. My dcs had windows of between 1-2hrs at that age.

Also do you have an evening routine, with bath and cuddling in the dark before putting her down? You could try introducing one at 5.30pm (before she gets upset) and see if she just goes down for the night. I know 7pm is conventional bedtime but mine needed to go earlier and it sounds like yours may too.

Mine go into growbag with day clothes on.

HTH

My DS was the same. He slept in his pram during the day til very recently (still does sometimes at 13mo). He slept better there, I could rock him if he woke earlier than he needed and it meant I could go out! It was a bit of a survival strategy for me as evenings were out of bounds.

When DS sleeps in his cot during the day I put his gro bag on as it helps establish it's sleepy time. I usually keep his clothes on, and use a summer gro bag if it's warm. His room's quite chilly generally so I don't have to worry about him overheating, though.

Sympathy for the colic, it absolutely sucks.

Ten weeks is so teeny! My (possibly not very helpful) advice is to do whatever you need to do to get through it. Once she's grown out of the colic then you can start with routines and cot naps and stuff. I would have struggled with grobags at that age because it would have disturbed him - if he fell asleep I just held him or covered him with a blanket once he was a bit older.

What I am trying to say, not very eloquently, is that she's still very little and there's nothing wrong with doing what you need to do to get through it. I have found it much easier to "teach" DS stuff about sleep as he's got older. I spent a lot of time upset and stressed (as did he) when he was little, trying to make him do things he wasn't ready to do. One of my big regrets

thank you all for your kind advice. great idea to get a lighter tog duvet -she seems to enjoy going into it at night so brilliant idea! she has her moments with how long she needs to sleep and unfortunately each day is different as to how tired she gets = we do activity after feed but tend to have a bath after her 6pm feed - she is often too grouchy to do before the feed! and then the colic starts... but i will try and see if being in the dark works. sounds great!

The good news is your approaching the age when daytime naps start to get easier... DD slept on me or in her buggy up until around 12 weeks and now sleeps in our darkened room in her cot during the day and it (plus ditching the dummy) really helped her to sleep longer. The other top tip is to put her down for a nap afterr 2 hours of being awake, I'd start watching her for yawns at about 1.5 hours but if you havent seen any by 2 hours put her down for a nap anyway. Good luck

thank you so much - that's great advice! she often tires after an hour or an hour and a half and needs to sleep then - occasionally up again before feed is due, but seems to go for another 30 minutes if i can amuse her. thank you again! we'll keep trying

Hi Katherine. At her age, I wouldn't even try to amuse her to keep her awake if she has already been awake for over 1.5 hrs. I found at that age, dd could last about 1.5 hrs (2 at an absolute push), before having total meltdown. If we missed that windown in which to put her down for a nap (often, this involved going out in the pram/car to make sure she would go to sleep), she would scream and scream as she was so overtired.

We went overboard in making sure she was asleep as soon as she started yawning (2 hr walks often happened! -why didn't I lose weight! ). Only really possible with one child but it worked wonders to help evening/night sleep as she had good quality sleep during the day.

Naps, combined with a good and consistent bedtime routine really helped (I found split feeding, before and after bath good as well).

Good luck.

I kept ds sleeping in bouncy chair in living room until I cut out the night time feed (about 5 months) so that he knew (?) cot was long sleep and other places were shorter sleeps.
Ds was very bad with colic and reflux so used to make him nap on a slant iyswim to keep the milk down.
We had a strict bedtime routine from about 2 weeks and the days were mostly the same. As he screamed from 2pm, we'd go out in the afternoon.
If she's getting bad at about 6, try putting her in the bath to distract, nice and relaxing, maybe get in too, nice warm feed, a big hug and then bed.
Have you tried infacol? Gripe water? any other colic drops? Dentinox is good

I think i mistyped - if I can keep her going for an hour or an hour and a half (which I usually can) I pick her up at the signs of tiredness and put her down in her pram (or cot) - although sometimes she is so tired that i can't keep her awake after a feed - it all seems a little random considering we are on a routine which only varies 30 minutes either way, depending on whether she wakes at 6.30am/7am or 7.30am (if the former i try to get the dummy in). we are on Aptimil Easy Digest, infacol, have started on Colief and are using Dr Browns bottles as of yesterday. She's now decided to take a lot less feed (not sure which bit she doesn't like of the hideous cocktail!) so we are going to have to start dropping one of the above to see which one it is... (this is actually posted on the bottle feeding thread!..) Also, quickie.. (!) how do you know when your child actually isn't tired any more and wants to get up and play (is bored), and if your child has just woken due to colic and you need to shhhh them back to sleep?!!!

Try rubbing her tummy in clockwise direction as this follows digestive system and might help. Also lay her on your lap and move her legs in a cycle motion to and from her stomach and should help relieve any trapped wind.
Infacol is quite strong, my lo hated it.
If she's pulling her legs up and squirming about alot when she wakes, it's probably a little pain and you could try soothing her back to sleep. I think while she's in this stage and she's waking, you just have to go with the flow through the daytime. Not much help I know, but only 4 more weeks to go and in 3 months, you'd have forgotten all about it!
I'm not sure if different formulas make much of a difference tbh and I have heard from a few people that aptimil isn't very nice

I think if they have woken up because they have slet enough and are ready to play, then they will wake up all happy ans smiley. If they wake but are still tired/colicky, then they are more likely to be grumpy when they wake - or that is what dd is like! Hope you get things sorted. From what I have seen, colic gets much better/disappears around 12 weeks so hopefully, not long to go.

Dr Brown's bottles will really help... You might see some improvement pretty soon. If DD wakes up crying I know she's still tired and chances are she'll resettle. If she wakes up cooing there's no chance she's going back down!

Oh and we used Hipp Organic... We use to use C&G and Avent bottles but she got colic really badly. Since swapping she's not had trouble with wind at all and Hipp is half the price

thank you all - unbelievably since i started this thread dd is on her second sleep on the cot and I have managed to get her back to sleep a few times when she has woken up.. small victories and i'm sure all will change again very quickly but i feel on top of the world (for at least the next ten minutes