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Northern California Babies
Sleep Help Needed - long
I realize that we are probably still in the 4 month regression, but I am still attempting to maintain SOME semblance of control here.
EJ is still waiting every 1-3 hours, all night, we had 8 wakeups last night, I am one tired as heck momma.
I get that I may not be able to change how many times he is waking up right now but I want to see what I can do about his eating....maybe that can help the wakeups. He used to only need to eat 2-3 times a night and now he is eating everytime he wakes up...anywhere between .5 oz to 4 oz, usually 1 oz.
I have tried to delay his feedings and tried soothing him back to sleep without eating (in hopes that the next wakeup he would eat more, so he could work towards going back to his previous nocturnal eating habits).
Nothing seems to be helping.
I am starting to reach the end of my sanity...I am lucky if I sleep 4 hours a night because as soon as I get him back to bed and me comfortable in bed and just about to doze off he is up again. DH is no help 4 nights a week because he has to be up at 4am for work. So I am flying solo most nights (and even the 3 nights he can help, he mostly just does one or two wakeups and then gets up in the morning with him, which believe me helps sooooo much, but it still means I am primary).
Anyone go through something like this? Is it something that they just naturally change or is there something you did that helped?
Of course keeping in mind his age, he is not ready for true sleep training, and I am not ready for it either...I just feel like I need to be doing something to try and help both of us sleep and feel better.
In case you wanted to know, his daytime napping is fabulous, he transitioned from 4 naps to 3 and they last 1-1.5 hours for each. He is pro at daytime now and he is a very happy thriving child when awake, our only problem area is wakeups (he goes down for bed well and he goes back to sleep easily at night, but he wakes up many many times, yes I do know the difference between his fussing and him screaming for me, I allow him to fuss around because usually when he fusses he goes back to sleep on his own).
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Sleep Help Needed - long
Our boys sound very much alike..good during the day...rough at night. Per the advice of my pedi I gave him Tylenol with one of the earlier wake-ups to try and push a longer sleep cycle (eating more etc..)
Also giving more solids during the day has helped tremondosly. At night he takes a bottle around 5:30-6. Then solids around 6:30. Bath and more bottle if he will take it and bed at 7:30 when I nurse again. I just try and fill him up in the hours before bed.
But really we go back and forth between 2 wake-ups a night and loads like you are going thru. I dont know that there is much that can be done....
HUGSSSS
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I tried lots of things to get C to stretch his night time sleep. None of it worked. At that stage I thought I'd die from all the nightwakings, but somehow we survived to fight over it another day.
Rather than fight him on it, I decided periodically to just give him what he wanted so that we could get back to sleep as quickly as possible. That seemed to get me the most sleep.
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this may be helpful:
https://pregnant.thebump.com/new-mom-new-dad/newborn-basics/qa/4-month-wakeful-period.aspx
Re: I've heard that babies can have a wakeful period at around four months, where a baby who's been sleeping fine all of a sudden starts waking during the month. Why does this happen, and how should I deal with it?Can I ask what you did?
Money Matters The other half's blog.
EJ is growing up too fast!
We recently sleep trained DS and he's now sleeping through the night (from 7 pm - 6:30). I can't say it was easy and it was certainly a long time coming. At 4 months he was still waking at least 2 times a night, if not 3. This went on until about a few weeks ago. The key factors for successful sleep training were:
*early bedtime - DS goes to bed every night between 6:30-7pm. He also dropped his third nap about a month ago, which makes him much more tired in the evening.
*eliminating night feedings -- we gradually stopped feeding him at night.
*Increasing food intake before bedtime - DS is a huge baby like yours (24 lbs at 6 months!) and eats A LOT! We found that giving him more food in the evening hours really helps keep him going through the night.
*Cry it out. As controversial as it is, this was the only method that worked for us. We used the Ferber method of increasing the time between responding to your baby. It worked after only a few days.
*stomach sleeping. DS started turning himself around about a month ago. At first he (and I!) would panic and I would go in and turn him around. I stopped turning him around once I realized he sleeps much better and deeper while on his tummy. My pedi thinks it's totally fine that he sleeps on his stomach given his age and weight.
Good luck! Sleep issues are SO hard. Be patient though -- your DS will start sleeping better soon!
-green