Babies: 3 - 6 Months
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Goes to sleep fine, but wakes all night
My son (5.5mo) goes to sleep fine on his own. I nurse him around 7:30/7:45, rock for a couple of minutes, and then lay him down awake (in his magic sleep suit and with pacifier). Without fail, he is up 45 minutes later (I just do a paci pop here). He then is up again about 4 more times throughout the night. I don't feed him every time time, about half I do though. We haven't done any sleep training, and I'm hesitant to as he falls asleep on his own. Would sleep training (I'm reading the Ferber book, which is what I would implement if we go down this path) even work in this scenario where he goes to sleep fine, but just wakes a lot? It seems that most people let their babies fuss/cry at the beginning of the night, but that's not our issue. He's a big boy, around 18lbs, so I'm not worried about him eating. Although, I think he does take in a lot of calories at night because he's so busy during the day and doesn't love to stop and eat. (For example, he doesn't even want to eat when he wakes for the day). I don't really know what I'm getting at here, but I'm tired! Any advice would be amazing. (This is especially all a bummer because he only woke once a night to eat from 6weeks to 11weeks!)
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Re: Goes to sleep fine, but wakes all night
Jess & Adam, married 2009, precious Audrey born in 2011. BFP 1/6/13, 6-wk MMC discovered at 9 wks 2/11/13. D&C 2/18/13, second D&C 4/23/13 for retained placenta.
BFP 8/24/13!! EDD 5/1/14, delivered healthy and sweet Zoey Leanne on 5/5/14 by repeat c-section.
We are also in the same boat. My LO is almost 5 months. She goes down just fine, but is up between 30 minutes to an hour later. Then it is such a struggle to get her to go back to bed for at least a couple of hours. She typically wakes up 2-3 times a night after we get her to sleep the 2nd time. I do not have any advice, but wanted to let you know that I understand where you are coming from.
Our LO now goes to sleep fine (thanks sleep training) and we also want to work on the night waking although she is now only waking 1-2 times (instead of 3-4) and some of that I think was helped by the bedtime training.
However, she is far from consistent but we know she can go till 1am maybe 2 so we are trying to work on that. Per Ferber's suggestions we've started adding 30 min to when we'll feed her at night based on her longest stretch. So we started with 3 hours and we're up to 5. If she wakes before then we let her cry and use the graduated intervals to check in. It seems to be helping. I'm not trying to get her to sleep through 8-10 hours but if we can consistently only get up 1-2 times or just once that would be great
My LO is the same. Or should I say WAS - we just moved her room, switched it with the guest room. The guest room was warmer. I think LO was just cold at night! I was surprised b/c she was in a onesie, footy PJs, and a sleep sack. One night, all we had were fleece options, so we layered her up in fleece and she slept so awesome! LIGHTBULB! We decided to switch rooms and she's been sleeping awesome since.
The only other thing I can think of is that he seems to have daytime and nighttime mixed up? Do you do a nighttime routine? How is it different from naptime rountines? Also, maybe feed him at each wakeup but for shorter and shorter times, instead of only feeding him at some wakeups. It's like the lottery - he'll keep waking up if he thinks he's going to win! WIth the shorter feedings, he may not think they are worth it after awhile.
@jlSimon
His room is warm and the sleep suit keeps him warm as well, so I don't think that's it. And we definitely have a whole night routine - bath, goodnight moon every night, nurse with lights off and sound machine on. I'm sure we'll get there eventually!