sleep paranoia making things worse?

[golemmings]

Sorry - quite long

DD is 4 1/2 months. Never slept though but was fairly regularly sleeping 7-6 with 3 feeds. Daytime naps and feeds were totally random.

Over Christmas my mum made lots of comments along the lines of "Welits not for me to say..." and then didn't say anything or "Well, of course, I don't know anything anything about BF babies, but..." nad then stopped. I was FF and slept through the night from 8 weeks. I now realise that I am me and DD is DD.

BUT she made me sufficiently paranoid that I started to try and ensure only 2 night feeds - one at 10/10.30 when we go to bed and one about 2-3ish with a view to making the 2amfeed later or shorter and get rid of it by 6 months. I have tried to ensure naps and feeds are more regular during the day.

Now DD wakes up every 2 hours at night (it started ofter a day when she'd had little to eat but that was over a week ago) and now feeds at 10, wakes at 12.30 but settles without a feed, feeds at 2 and wakes at 5 and won't go back to sleep but doesn't get fed until 6 (cue much hungry crying). She has a half hour nap between 6 and 8 and goes down for a nap between 10 and 11. If left to her own devices she will sleep for 4-5 hours. I've started waking her up after a couple or so just to ensure that she eats and isn't too awake at bedtime.
At the moment during the day she often feeds before a sleep and just after, too - which means she's feeding every 2-3 hours during the day.

I feel as though I am making a tolerable situation worse and the more I try to fix it, the worse it gets. i have however stopped listening to my mum!

Does anybody have any advice?

Been there done that too! So desperate to please my mum, I tried all sorts of things to get my first child to sleep through at only 3 months! And had the same problem as you.

I think you may need to change her routine and it maybe tricky to adjust her to this but I think the current plan is not working Hopefully once she is settled into this she'll sleep better at night.

There are a lot of ideas and recommendations out there and it can be a controversial area. I can tell you what worked for me at that age with both my LO's but you probably have books and books with routines in. I think once you've retrained her into a new routine all will be well though.

Go on tea - what worked for you? I'm grateful for any input! I have books and stuff but real life experiences are brilliant.

I tended to find with my BF baby boy that he needed to be fed every 3 hours or 2 if going through a growth spurt in the day. (Sadly with my first she was bottle fed by 4 months and having feeds every 4 hours - TMI).

At night he'd have a feed at 11pm (or slightly earlier if he woke sooner), when he woke again (usually 2 or 3am) and then a feed at 6am ish when he woke. I never woke him for feeds at night.

He didn't start sleeping through the night until about 9 months. By this, I mean not waking at 2 or 3am. I continued the 11pm feed until 11 months when he was no longer interested in it.

I noticed that most routines were based on 4 hourly feeds, which just didn't work with my BF baby, so I used the nap times only and fed every 3 hours in the day instead, but as my boy got bigger and hungrier I ended up feeding every 2 hours in the day towards the end before weaning.

See - I bet you wish you'd never asked and I'm probably confusing you now.

Between 3-6 months I found that when they had their first morning feed, it was best to just keep them up for an hour only and then pop them back down for a nap.

Then when they woke again I'd keep them up until 11.30am - 12 ish and then they have another nap for maybe 90 minutes or more if lucky.

Then sometimes they'd need another short nap at 3.30pm or 4ish just a short one to get them through until bedtime at 7pm.

Sometimes by 5 months though, a baby if they sleep well at night and wake at 7am ish, can only need a nap at 10.30am and 3pm.

I haven't put the feeds in as they really do vary with BF babies unless you're very lucky and can somehow spread them out 4 hourly...

See totally confusing and I may get loads of stick from other MN now for confusing you

That's really interesting - and makes perfect sense. She has introduced her own early morning nap and if I can stall the morning one until 11ish we can get to toddler groups and things.

I had her weighed today and she's putting on weight at a reasonable rate so I'm less paranoid about underfeeding her. Its all moving in the right direction.

AND she slept until just after 10 so I got to watch the end of Survivors this evening. Fabulous child!!!

Thank you for your help on this one.

Not only that - she slept until 2:20 and then until 5:50this morning. She's not done that for ages.

You know that thing where your PC doesn't work... and you phone tech-support and when tech support stands behind you, it works perfectly...

Here, you ask for help on mumnset and the child sorts itself out...
I think being more relaxed and going with the flow is great!

Aww I'm so glad! Let's hope things continue. But I'd be the same and put a post on here for things to suddenly improve again on their own. Its just reassuring to hear other peoples experiences at the end of the day.

I hope tonight goes well for you too x