IRREGULAR SLEEP PATTERNS

[MollyMooMin]

HI! Thought i had a good routine going with 10 wk old DD1. through the day she would be up for an hour, in bed an hour & so on, but now she can be up/ in bed anything from as little as 10 mins! Just don't know where i am now. I'm in danger of getting her out of bed as she's crying & wide awake, taking her downstairs to play, only to find that within maybe 10 mins she's overtired. It's like I'm reading the signs all wrong. Once she's overtired i have NO chance of calming her down! She's JUST started sleeping through the night (well, from 11ish to 7ish) but can be very restless & loud in her sleep. Any ideas greatly appreciated.

yeah.....put her in a cupboard under the stairs.

JOKING!

just thought i would bump it up for ya marra!

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Don't panic ... maybe you are needing to get to grips with what she's trying to tell you, but nobody knows your girl as well as you do and she's growing and developing all the time, so it can feel like you've just got familiar with what she's doing when she starts doing something else. Main thing is, your instincts are probably right. If she's restless when she's sleeping, she may actually wake herself up sometimes and cry because she's still tired and want to go back to sleep. My second needed a cuddle for about 10 min every time she woke up from about 4 months. She still likes it in the mornings and she's 5 now. When she was falling asleep most of the time she cried for about 2 min and then dozed off. At first I had no idea what to do, but sometimes giving her peace did the trick.

My ds4 (almost 14 weeks now) can be quite restless when first settling down to sleep. I tuck his sheet and blankets in quite snugly (but not so they are too tight) at the edges with his arms underneath and gently but firmly hold them down until he stops wriggling them about. God that sounds awful reading that back to myself! You get the picture though - just gently stopping him flailing his arms about to stop him waking himself up!