Night Time Sleep Patten

[Mel09]

Just wondering if your littlies go straight back to sleep after a feed at night?

DD (3 months) is up for 1 hour to 1.5 hours at night, if I try to put her to sleep before she's ready she'll scream the house down, and I have to rock her/nurse her to sleep, if not again she;ll scream the house down. I don't want to do this, but I get frustrated when I can't get back to sleep coz she wont settle, then I cry and it makes for one big horrible night... If I get sleep deprived I actually get quite frustrated and angry with her, which is why I let her get tired before attempting to put her to bed.

I'm not strong enough to do controlled cryig, but staying up that long at night is killing me. DD#1 never did this...

Any suggestions, advice, what did you do???

[BhoysGirl]

HI Mel,

Don't know if you're already doing this, but have you tried a dream feed? I know that I can pick my DS up, feed him & get him back into bed without him opening his eyes, which then "usually" gets me a few more hours.

Also, when I'm absolutely exhausted, I bring him into bed with me & lie on my side to feed, which lets me close my eyes & snooze until he's finished. I guess it's a shortened version of co-sleeping, which we don't do because DS gets really cranky if I try to cuddle him too much, he's a kid that definitely prefers his own bed for sleeping.

We have been lucky though, he's always been good at going back to sleep in the night, just not so good at staying asleep...

[Ezz]

I think it's pretty normal to nurse to sleep at that age - do you still need to wait 1.5 hours first, or will DD go straight to sleep if you feed her?

Having said that, I tend to put DS in the cot while he is still awake & he puts himself to sleep (when he was little, he used to grunt to sleep, now he babbles). Is your DD able to put herself to sleep during the day? I worked on getting him to self-settle during the day, then he was able to do it at night too.

[Mel09]

Thanks Ezz, She wont stay asleep long if she's not been up long enough at night... I am trying to get her to self settle during the day (as of today!). so we will see how that goes. I guess I am doing the controlled crying thing, but sofar she has taken her dummy straight away and gone back down for at least 45 minutes...

And Thanks Jan... I have tried, but dream feeding and Tahli dont mix, She'll be wide awake and stay up again!!!

[Butterfly_Princess]

I was having this problem with DD up until yesterday! Although it was reversed, she would scream the house down during the day but will be put to sleep in her cot wide awake at night and would go to sleep all by herself..
But what i did yesterday was i put her down she would start to grizzle (which usually turned into screaming if left for another 10 or 20 seconds) so id give her her dummy and walk out, she would spit it, grizzle, i give her her dummy again etc..eventually i realised i hadnt needed to replace her dummy for an hour and she was asleep..it worked the whole day. Today i didnt even need the dummy she settled herself and now is asleep..im hoping its a keeper!!
Ive got a thread going that i started yesterday with some tips from othe rmembers already if u would like to pop in What can I do??

[Emma1979]

Sounds similar to my dd who is now 14 months, but when she was younger she used to be awake for hours in the middle of the night, the dream feed also didn?t work with her when she was that age, but I did it from about 6 or 7 months til about 9 months? I don?t have any answers for you unfortunately, I just used to be walking the hallway while she was wide awake trying to rock her to sleep with her crying. Things settled down around 9 or 10 months though. I know that feels like an eternity away. The only thing I can suggest is just try to be patient and wait for the phase to end, it will end eventually? I also found that with my active wide awake bub, once she could crawl and then walk, she was a lot more physically tired, and started to sleep better. Good luck. I know what sleep deprivation feels like, it is hell on earth. It won?t last forever though so just try to do everything you can to create a sleep conducive environment and one day she will work it out,that night time is for sleeping. That said my dd woke up last night at 230am wanting to play!! GRRRR. PS it gets a lot easier to let them grizzle a bit when they are older and can actually understand what ?its time for night nights? means.