Author Topic: Extended 45 min nap to 1.5 hr and stopped sleeping through the night! Help?  (Read 1608 times)

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Offline saintclair

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Ok, after a hard few days, I've got my 3mo lo taking longer naps. But now he's not sleeping through at night! He has slept at least one 5hr stretch EVERY night since we brought him home from the hospital, but now he's waking every 3-4 hrs.

Another thing that has changed is that I added a dream feed. (I'm already phasing it out). Here is his nighttime sleep pattern from before:

Bath at 8:30
Massage
Bedtime by 9

Wakes between 3 and 5 for a feed
goes right back to sleep

Wakes between 6 and 7 for a feed and is up for the day.

I adde the dream feed because I read on this site that a 3mo can sleep 8-10 hrs. I thought it would be great (worth staying up for the midnight DF) if he'd sleep through til 5 or 6. But as soon as I added it, he stopped sleeping the long stretch and he still gets up around 2 or 3. Now his schedule looks like this:

bath 8:30
Massage
bedtime by 9

DF at 12

Wakes b/w 2 and 3 for feed
right back to sleep

Wakes at 5-6 for a feed
right back to sleep

Wakes at 7-8:30 for a feed and is up.


I thought at first he was going through a growth spurt, but now it's been a week of this. But each middle of the night feeding he's eating for a whole solid feed--sometimes needing some of the other breast also.

Can Growth spurts be this long or have I messed up his sleep schedule. What do I do? Any ideas?

Offline deckchariot

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Congrats first of all on the nap extension!!!  That's hard work, so well done!!.

My first thought is that his bedtime is a bit late.  Most babies seem to do best on a 12 hour day, so if he's up for the day at 7-8:30, he needs to be headed for bed around 7-8:30.  Also, with a df at midnight, that is probably disrupting his night sleep.  In Tracy's 2 book, she recommends not doing a df any later than 11 because it can interfere with the night sleep.  That may actually be what's going on for you.

Is he generally on a 3 hr EASY?  What's your daytime routine like?  I would think that's what you want to tweak here.  At 3 mos, my dd was eating at 7, 10, 1, 4, 7 (bedtime), df at 10 (or 11 some nights).  If you are able to move his bedtime earlier and his df earlier, that may fix the NWs.

I'm going to move this over to the NW's board and see what they have to say there, since that's really your current issues, not so much his naps. 

HTH
michelle
Michelle




Offline Bryony

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Hi SaintClair and welcome to the NWs board!!  I agree with Michelle on all counts - but if you can post your daytime routine let's see if we can come up with anything else.  And yes well done on extending the naps - that's no mean feat and I am sure will pay off in the long run - sometimes when you change something it takes a little while for things to settle down.

Bryony


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Offline saintclair

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Thanks for the help so far--I think I need more of it! Last night, although I moved the bedtime up to 8:15 and the dream feed to 11, he was up again at 1, 3, 5, and 7:30. :-\ I know I should have done pu/pd instead of feeding him, but I was so tired that I just fed him each time. At each feed he ate an entire meal, draining the breast and fussing if I took him off after just a little while, which made  me nervous because he doesn't eat that often during the day and I don't want him to start confusing day and night.

Our plan going forward is to suffer through tonight and tomorrow and then my husband will help me pu/pd through the night starting Friday so that we can nap the next day if need be.

Here's a look at our daytime schedule (with previous, later bedtime):

up and fed at 7:30
activity and wind down
nap at 9

up and fed at 11:30
activity and wind down
nap at 1:30

up and fed at 3:30
activity and wind down
nap at 5

up and fed at 6
light activity
fed at 7:30
wind down
bath at 8:30
massage
short feed
bed by 9

Then, until a week or two ago, he ALWAYS (I mean, since he was five days old) slept until at least 2, sometimes as long as 6, but most nights until 3:30 or 4. Then he'd go right back to sleep and sleep another 2.5-3hrs.

And now he never goes 2.5 hrs, he's always waking after 2.

Other ideas--he keeps getting out of his swaddle, which upsets him (I tried leaving an arm unswaddled during a nap so he could suck his fingers--didn't nap well at all, swaddled him and he went right to sleep).

Also, he's going right back to sleep after the feed in the middle of the night, even though it's every 2 hours. Could this be a growth spurt and he's just really hungry? (I know he's not snacking). Or is it just that he needs pu/pd and to be trained not to wake up.

Should I drop the DF altogether? I feel like it has exacerbated the issues.

And this is my final and most important question:
If I'm doing pu/pd through the night, when do I know that he's really hungry and it's time to feed, and when I should just be training him to go back to sleep? Just base it on the old times before he started having problems?

Offline Bryony

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Hi there

Well don't base future plans on last night - any changes take a while to work themselves through while your LO gets used to the "new regime"!

My thoughts:

- does he really sleep for 2.5 hrs for the morning nap? In my view that's a bit long - you might want to limit it to 2 hrs in case he is getting too much daytime sleep.  If you are going to have one really long daytime nap I think many people feel it's better for this to be around lunchtime.  Just my opinion.

- so are you doing 4 hourly EASY?  Most don't manage the longer A times until they are 4 months old - but if he's doing OK on that then fine. Some babies manage to go 4 hours between feeds (as yours is I assume?) but not the 2 hrs A time you need for 4 hourly EASY.

- that last A time was way too long on your old schedule - 3 hours is a long time especially after a shorter nap. I would definitely bring bedtime forwards to something more like 7:30pm, which will then give you a 12 hr day if he gets up at 7:30pm.  Overtiredness can definitely contribute to night wakings.  I would go for a 45 min catnap then bed about 1.5hrs later.

- you could try dropping the dream feed and just feeding him when he wakes up hungry. Some people find the DF makes things worse, for others it works really well.

- in terms of PU/PD - if he is only 3 months old in my view he's too young for this. Tracey recommends it around 4 months - but some babies don't handle it until even older as they find it too stimulating. So you may be better off using shh/pat to try and get him back to sleep.  Does this work for you?

- In terms of when to feed him - I'm afraid this has to be a judgement call as to whether you think he's hungry - but I would try not to feed if it's less than 4-5hrs since the last feed...

Love your avatar by the way, he's really cute!

Bryony


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Offline saintclair

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Thanks!
You caught me--I wrote down his schedule wrong--his morning nap is only an hour and a half, and the only two hour nap he usually takes is at lunch time. In approximating all the times I might have not gotten it exactly right (I use to write EVERYTHING down, and then I realized it was making me a little neurotic, so I stopped). I've been noticing this morning, that he's actually closer to a 3.5 hr EASY, with the only 4hr being after the lunchtime nap.

However, he is awake for an extremely long time in the evening, and I've never tried a catnap. I should try it.

Also, I'm planning on phasing his bedtime earlier, a half hour each night. Afer your earlier suggestion, I watched him really closely last night and realized that he was really tired starting at about 7. I had to stretch and keep him up to make sure I had enough breast milk for the last feed so he'd have enough calories to get through the night (of course it wouldn't have mattered as he was up every two hours! :)

My husband just picked up Tracy's 2nd book on his lunch break, so I'm looking forward to reading that.

I'm stopping the DF tonight. Honestly, it seems to have made everything worse--I'm glad to hear we're not the only ones.

Pu/pd seemed to work for extending the naps, although after a day or two, we've only needed the shush/pat which is what I use now (he tends to cry--eyes closed-- at the 45 min mark, and 30 seconds of shush/pat put him right back into sleep). Maybe the shush/pat is the way to go for the night wakings. I also think that tonight (as we're not beginning the shush-pat til Friday when my DH can help) I'm going to limit the anount of time bf in the night feeds. But should I give him one normal bf at the time he usually wakes (3-4am)?

Thanks for all your help!!!

And your girl is adorable--I'm hoping for a daughter some day!

Offline Colin Macs Mom

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If it makes you feel any better, I could never do a DF either. It made things SO much worse. We clusterfed in the evenings instead and that worked pretty well.
Jessica
Mom to Colin Ronald, August 18, 2005
Spirited + Reflux =  :o