Help with breaking the habit!!

[Ngala]

Hey All,

I need HELP with breaking my DD's habit of waking up in the middle of the night!!!

DD slept through the night from 7 weeks old and up until about 6 months old. I did have a pretty good run of it and then it all ended when she started rolling around in bed. During those days I would just give her dummy, tuck her back in and she would go back to sleep. But now, she is awake and standing up in bed and crying. I tried to tuck her back in and settle her, but doesnt work! So I just end up giving her a quick feed, maybe 5 mins, and then put her back to bed. But I want to break that habit!! I miss having a full nights sleep

I dont feel like she should be needing this night feed, and its not like she has this feed and she sleeps in either. Most of the time she is waking again at 3am, 5am, 6am or 7am! If I am lucky, she will sometimes sleep in til 7.30am.

DD has lots of feeds during the day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner plus 4-6 breastfeeds a day. We dont do much snacks at the moment. I am trying to introduce snacks, but sometimes forget! She has a bit of water during the day, but I sometimes forget to offer it to her (naughty mum!). And she will have 2 sleeps during the day, these will be any where between 30mins to 1.5hrs. First sleep is normally around 10am and the second sleep is around 3 or 4.

So I hope I have given enough information to get some sort of help!! I know that lots of people have gone to sleep school for sleep issues and I am hoping that someone out there has gone through the same thing and can give me some help!! I have thought of letting her cry it out, but she gets hysterical and I give in..

so... HELP ME PLEASE!

Oh and I must mention.. we have been teething a bit the past month. Two teeth are out and there may be more coming cause she is getting really clingy again, but I dont think this is entirely the problem as its been like this for months before the teething started. I am planning to get some teething relief from brauers this weekend.. But I dont think that this is the reason she is waking all the time.

[Olive]

its a tough one veronica! when sophie started doing it around 11 months, i too got up ans fed as it was easier then DH had holidays so he got the job of resettling her, only took 3 nights of dad going in and she realised she wasnt going to get fed for her to start sleeping thorugh again!
its worth sending DH in instead of going yourself

[bigbird2girls]

Hi Veronica,

first of all big huge for you. You are doing a great job by the sounds of it well done.
My dd is coming up 10mths now and the same thing is just starting to happen to me as well. Blissful sleeping up until now and yes i am beginning to get a little grumpy .
I am though putting it down to teeth as my first daughter did the same thing exactly. I have now resorted to giving her a bottle and she goes back to sleep within 5 mins so to get more sleep i just do this for now until her next stunt is pulled on me. I look at it this way better to do it like this than get no sleep or 2-3 hrs like some mothers do.

In your situation maybe she just wants a cuddle for a bit as she is feeling a little sore on her gums or lonely and needs a bit of comfort. So as AJP suggested maybe send DH in and see if this works for you. The other thing u can try is pain relief like panadol or nurofen before she goes to bed and see if this does work - then it must be teeth? The best one i use is called sm -33 i find this 10 times better than bonjela. To be honest with you nothing else worked but this, panadol and nurofen.
I would just go with what your baby is wanting at this stage she may also be going through a growth spurt and building her supply of food/milk up to start/begin a new pattern for day and night?
The only other thing i can suggest is the controlled crying and i assure you it is very very hard i did this with my first daughter and it worked. But it is not nice and i ended up in tears myself but it did work and i swear by it. You need a good support partner and to be strong but if you don't do it correctly it will not work. I have this book called toddler taming and it is brilliant you can PM me if you like and i can give you some tips and tricks from the book on sleeping issues.

I hope it all goes back to normal for you soon and lets hope it is just a little hiccup and she is back to her normal sleeping pattern in no time.

Jen

[Saffi]

Veronica

My bub is doing the same thing. It is really tough isn't it.

I am reading a book by the Baby Whisperer and she advocates dream feeding to eliminate the need for waking for food and the pick up/put down method when they cry. To be honest only started this last night and after an hour of this I gave in and fed him and he drank a whole bottle. I think with my bub it is more of a habit as he seems to wake at the same time every night and he hasn't learned how to put himself back to sleep yet.

Hoping someone here will have some good advice for both of us LOL.

[Beach Mama]

We had a similar problem, but she was waking every2-3 hours and at around 8mths I decided that I would not feed at all over night anymore between 7 and 5. So we went in and cuddled, patted, rocked etc... and yep she did cry once she realised there was no booby coming but we still comforted her during this, and it only took a few nights for her to realise and to start sleeping better. It is really tough though and you need to be prepared for some pretty yucky nights, even with the cuddles and pats etc...

It is up to you hun, but I guess the key is to be consistent, once we decided there were no more feeds, that was it, I didn't want to confuse her by feeding her some nights and not others.
Good luck with it all hun!

[Ngala]

Thanks for you replies!! I really appreciate it and gives me a little bit of comfort knowing I am not the only one out there right now, but I wish we were ALL sleeping through the night!!

I think what I need to do is just stop feeding her. I know this is going to be the key, but I just havent gotten round to trying it out yet!! There was one night where she woke around 1am and I just cuddled and rocked her back to sleep without any problems, but then she woke up again 1 hour later, so I caved and fed her. I just always felt this would be the easiest way cause I am normally half asleep, so atleast with feeding I could sit down and close my eyes!

And I know that I do get up too fast when I hear her crying. I've got the baby monitor on on the bedside table, so she cries, and I get up straight away before she gets too hysterical. Maybe I will not go in as fast and see what happens...

I have tried the dream feed, but DD refuses to open her mouth!! haha so that isnt going to work. And we have tried the panadol when she was teething, but she screamed the house down cause it was horrible. I am going to try and get something else next shopping trip, hopefully that could be part of the answer.

Thanks again everyone!! I will try with the cuddling only tonight. Pray that I dont give in and dont get up too many times.

[Emma1979]

oooh my dd was a shocker up until the magic age of 10 months and now i am in heaven, getting a full nights sleep!! sorry not what u wanted to hear... i dont have any answers.... i guess they all have their turn of being devils in the night.

[Jac]

How long has she been waking for and how often each night is she waking? My opinion is that she is either teething or going through a developmental stage that is causing her to be unsettled during the night. I bet she doesn't actually "need" the feed but is finding this to be the most comforting during this unsettled stage. I was just looking back through my DS's sleeping patterns over the past 12mths (he has not long turned 1). We have had stages of blissful nights sleeps for a few months followed by weeks of consistent waking. I am sure it has to do with some type of developmental stage and I think teething can unfortunately go on for some time. My DS has had no new teeth for over 3 months and we have has 3 months of no waking - not a coinciendence Methinks!! You can only really tell through retrospect with some of these things and to be honest, if a quick feed settles her then I would be keeping this up (depending on how long it's been going on for as I asked at the start!). She obviously really needs her mummy at the moment and while it feels horrible at the time, looking back for me it wasn't really that long that we had to go through it for. I will have to remember this with #2.....the first 1-2 years of their life can include wakeful nights because they NEED US at this age. Don't leave her to cry, she wants mum to comfort her at this stage. Hard I know!

Also, on the panadol thing, my DS hates the taste of panadol but seems to take nurofen and chemists own brand of panadol much better. Also, nurofen lasts longer than panadol and my Dr. recommended it for teething. Have you tried this? Obviously, you don't want to use it every night but handy when they don't settle easily after other methods have failed.

[Snacks]

Sounds like the 9 month milestone to me. We went through a similar thing at around 10 months. I really agree with Tan - consistency is key. We night-weaned at 7 months - DD was feeding 1-2 hourly and wouldn't co-sleep and I was sooooo tired, so that was the only option for us. No feeds between 12 midnight and 5am. This worked for us, but then at 10 months the night waking started up again. I'm convinced its a developmental thing, and has very little if anything to do with hunger...
Hang in there, Babe.

[Ngala]

Jac - She has been waking since about 6 mths and tomorrow she is going to be turning 9 months, so its been 3 months now! She normally wakes 2 times during the night, sometimes if I am lucky it is once at midnight and then next will be at 6 or 6.30am, I am happy to get out of bed at this time so it doesnt bother me (I am actually getting up at 5am these days to get to the gym! ) When her teeth cut through she was waking up hourly up until around midnight and then slept the rest of the night. Didnt realise she had teeth coming through til the next day tho!

Thinking about it, I can say that in the past 3 months I have had 4 full nights sleep. I dont know what I did different those nights tho!! I thought I had her back to normal when we went 2 nights, but the 3rd night we were up to our usual wakings. And then 2 weekends ago we went another 2 nights, so I thought, if we make it a 3rd maybe things will go back to normall. But NOPE!

Oh and I havent tried nurofen yet. Something that I should buy soon tho..

[Nadine216]

Ok, so I really quickly read your post and just wanted to say that dd did that too!! She was in a routine that she will wake up at 12:00, 2:30, 4:30 and then sleep till 7:30. She would be standing in her cot and crying. So, like you, I would give her a bottle, because that was the only way she would get back to sleep. I started with a full bottle and then realised that I am giving her to much milk, so I started making it less.
She still wakes. ALthough she has been doing it only around 5:30 some nights. I give her formula that has been diluted. And only 60ml. If that is done, she is done. I have noticed that she does not really drink the milk, only sucks a while and then spit out the bottle, so I have begun just popping in her dummy. It's working so far. We are down to 30ml of milk per night and 2/3 wakes where only one require me giving her the bottle.
So all I really wanted to say is .... you are not alone!!

[Ngala]

Nadine - I hope that you get down to 0 mls of milk soon and she sleeps through for you!! You need all the sleep you can get now. Congrats on your pregnancy!!


Ahhh, I am feeling tired this morning. Not cause of Avaleigh but cause I have been waking at 5am and going to the gym! i had gotten used to Avaleighs waking..... Last night when Avaleigh woke at 12am, I decided that I am just going to cuddle and rock her back to sleep. So in less than 5 minutes, she was tucked back in to bed and so was I! And I didnt hear a peep out of her until 6.45am this morning. So that was alright! I wonder what tonight will be like..

[~Trish~]

Great work! Sometimes bubs just need a little cuddle from mum to get them through .

IKWYM about being used to night waking, my DS2 has just started to sleep right through the night after waking frequently for ages. I kept waking at all the times that he used to wake . It has only been the last two nights that I have slept solidly LOL!

You're doing a great job

[Nadine216]

Thanks Veronica. I hope so too, but last night was a shocker!!! Her nose is blocked, so she is strugling to breat *sigh*

for Avaleigh!!! Go mummy!

[Ngala]

Alrighty.... so, we have gone three nights now with not feeding when Avaleigh wakes in the middle of the night. First night, only one waking but the past two there have been two wakings. the first waking I have to cuddle and rocking but the sleep, second waking all I need to do is put dummy in, pat bum and Avaleigh settles back to sleep.

How long could it take to get through the whole night again??!!

[Fire Fly]

Its hard when they are so unsettled through the night. DD#1 used to be a shocker, we even went to a sleep and settling place to help us but her undisturbed sleep was due to some trauma that happened at 7 months.
DD#3 though is a different story, she is 9.5 months and gets up once or twice a night for a feed. Im not unhappy with that. It would be great for her to sleep through an 8 hour night but i dont think that possible with breast fed bubs. (correct me if im wrong). I wouldnt say teething would be the problem unless she is really bad during the day, is she? My DD now has 7 teeth and 5 of them have only come over the space of a week. And her day sleeps are the same.

Does DD go down for a sleep after a feed of solids? and does she have solids then a drink? I find that system works for me and she doesnt tend to drink unless she has eaten first anyhow. Also does she self settle? I will give DD a drink then an hour later give her her meal then put her to bed and she is out like a light. Full belly makes for a content bub. The first born is always hard because everything is new.
Im not sure if ive helped or made things more complicated, that wasnt my intention if i have.