Sleep Advice Needed

JessieJH

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but would love your thoughts and advice.

My LO was sleeping 6 hour stretches at night and had two STTN occurances, but in the past few weeks we've gone backwards and her longest stretch, when she first goes down is now 2 hours- if I'm lucky.

During the day she naps very well- I try not to let her be awake more than two hours and she naps for about an hour each time (first nap is at 9:00, then around noon, then 3:00). She's long been a baby who went to 'bed' around 10, but I've realized that she's overtired at that hour and so we have worked to push bed up to 7:00. However, she only seems to treat this as a nap-even with the whole routine of dimmed lights, bath, massage, jammy change. So- she's back up at 8:00 and now won't sleep until 10:00 (or midnight last night when she just wouldn't go down).

When I put her to sleep for the night (in an arms reach co-sleeper next to me) she wakes up within two hours and won't settle down unless it's in bed with me. Just a couple of weeks ago I had no problems feeding her and then putting her back in the co-sleeper. I'm not sure what has changed. She seems to almost need to have a nipple in her mouth to sleep at night- argh. For naps she does not have this issue though- it's so weird.

Now- I"m totally sleep deprived as is my DH. I'm still on maternity leave so during the week I'm dealing with the sleep problem and he's sleeping in the guest room. :-(

We are thinking of moving her to her crib to see if that helps as soon as she's 4 months old. Possibly sleep training then as well (Healthy Sleep Habits, Health Child is something I'm reading).

Any ideas or suggestions? I feel like I need to get this handled in the next month before I return to work. I just can't go back in my zombie state!

JessieJH

I should have added that we do swaddle and I breast feed. DH also gives her a bottle of expressed milk frequently in the evening.

Lizg1799

Hey,  I posted a question about this yesterday.  Look further down on the board...it's titled sleep regression.  Evidently, a lot of us are going through this.  There is some great insight in the responses.