Dinner time dramas and what can I do??

Sorry if this is in the wrong section, didn't think it was a comforted sleep thing but if I'm wrong please move.. :)

DD is in quite a good routine which she has made herself but for quite awhile now, dinner time has always been an issue.

To explain her day...
She normally sleeps during the day for 4-5 hours between feeds except in the mid/late afternoon where she only has a 1 hour nap. She can be awake anywhere from 1hr to 2hrs depending. She is a happy little player when she is awake. In the afternoon she is normally asleep around 3.00pm and will have one sleep cycle nap till about 4.00pm or sometimes 4.30pm. After her nap we get up, change her, and feed her. Majority of the time she'll only have a small feed at this stage (maybe 120ml but never usually more than that) and then play time which can last from 30-50 minutes. After that when she starts to get a little annoyed I run a bath and we have 15-20 minutes in the bath which she adores. Then we get out and dress her and then sometimes I'll give her a top up feed if she looks like she wants it. I am NEVER able to get her to stretch to last till 7pm like alot of people suggest and the books all recommend so generally she is in bed by 6.00pm/6.30pm which is great as I can start cooking dinner.

However, and without fail, she is now waking about an hour or so later and will not resettle herself and will not go back to sleep. We've been resorting to getting her up, leaving her wrapped, and she sits out with us while we eat (if we didn't we'd never eat dinner or it would be majority cold). Once we've eaten I can put her back in bed and she'll go to sleep.

I don't understand though why she is waking and not resettling herself when she does it no problems the rest of the day. I never have to settle her, i just wrap her up and pop her in bed and she is off to sleep herself without my assistance. I've tried to perservere and keep putting her dummy back in, tried patting and shhh'ing hoping she'll settle again but after half an hour or so I give up (mainly due to hunger) and get her up and bring her out with us while we eat. She happily sits and watches and doesn't make any fuss so I know she isn't crying in bed from pain or anything like that.

What else can I try or what am I missing???

I don't know that I can be much help really but wanted to let you know that I remember DD going through a change at 3m which affected her sleep. I think there may even be a wonder week about then (don't take my word for it, my memory sucks)
Anyway, it's fantastic that she is going to sleep on her own happily (you are a lucky one). I personally, would be hesitant to start introducing patting/rocking/whatever or she may come to want it all the time (which is fine IMO but why start if you don't have to?)
Have you thought about her environment at that time? Is it dark enough to trigger night sleep now that summer is coming on?
My experience with DD and nephews/nieces, is that there's lots of times when sleep goes weird, and you hardly ever know why. If it was me, I would just go with the flow and keep to your bath and bed routine, get her up if that's what she needs right now, and see if she gets back to her old routine on her own. Sorry can't be more help but good luck!

Maybe she is still needing that little bit of awake time before she goes down? So she has a little power nap, up for a bit and then down again? Is she grizzly when she is up with you? If she is happy I would just get her up, let her play/watch etc for a bit and then resettle when she is tired again - so she might be going down at that 7-730 time anyway? Good luck - it is hard to work out what these munchkins need!

My DD was a relatively good sleeper until 3 months old and BANG it changed... especially during night she became a restless sleeper, crying in her sleep, wanting to feed more frequently. This lasted for a couple of months! So it seems that babies go through some developmental changes around 3 months. They also become more aware of their surroundings. It might also be that she now somehow senses your dinner time when both you and your partner are there, and hence enjoy being up and social with you guys? If she's happy and you're OK with her being there, I think I would just let her be there.

My guess is shes getting too much sleep during the day and isnt tired when it comes to the afternoon. As they get older they dont need as much sleep during the day. Ive always been told to feed them every 3-4 hours turning the day. This means waking them if they are asleep. During the night dont ever wake them though. Ive done this with both kids and both are wonderful sleepers and settle very easily, esp at night. Ive always gone on their lead on how much sleep they want during the day. When they have tired signs i let them sleep. But always wake to feed every 3-4 hours.

So my only suggestion is to not let her sleep so much in the mornings. Get her up give her a feed, let her have a play for an hour or so and continue doing that during the day, so she starts to learn the difference between night and day. How is she sleeping at night? Does she sleep through? If she doesnt, you might find she is having her main sleep during the day, so cutting that down may help her sleep through.

Best of luck.

I actually meant to say that she is feeding every 3-5 (5 is absolute max) hours during the day, not actual sleep. E.g. if she wakes at 7am to feed then she'll be back in bed within an hour or so (around 8.30am ish) and would then wake around 10.30am/11.00am for her next feed. So your suggestion Kellxx is what I'm actually doing.

She is sleeping during the night in 5-7 hour blocks depending (she has gone 8 hours once where she slept from 6pm till 2am) and I've been told to consider that as "sleeping through". She still wakes anywhere between 2am and 5am for a feed depending on the day before and how much she took at her last feed. During the day she is having sleeps of between 2 and 3 hours at a time but if we go out then she won't sleep at all, such as today, we left home at 10am where I woke her to go out, we got back just before 2pm and she didn't have a sleep during that time until I put her down at 2.30pm after a change and a feed.

CrystalBoo - Yes I do consider myself lucky that she self settles so easily and I agree that if I don't need to rock/pat etc her now then i don't want to introduce it as a way of getting her to sleep. I have considered her environment but her room gets good protection from the sun in late afternoon/early night so I don't think it's a light issue and she also has no trouble sleeping middle of the day with a well lit room. I was thinking it might be the smells of dinner cooking are getting her senses going but not sure if babies have that happen at this age although I'd have to assume they would. Would be curious to see if it still happened if I didn't cook dinner for her to be able to smell it (maybe have toast)...

Tanstar - I thought that maybe she wasn't tired also but when I put her down it's on the verge of her screaming the house down. She is generally showing extreme tired signs and crashes out straight away so I'm pretty sure she is really tired. But no she isn't grizzly when I get her up. She just sits in her rocker and doesn't make a sound, just watches what is around her. Last night I didn't get her back to sleep till almost 9.00pm which I would think is too late for her to be awake.

Will see what happens tonight... She is asleep now (3.45pm) but should wake in the next 15-30 minutes so I'll go from there and see if we can have a better night (considering hubby is working late and I have my Dad and Sister coming for dinner - my Mum is interstate for work and Sister's fiance is working late so I'm the cook for the night! :) - Should make for an interesting night and possibly a late dinner if she plays up again )

Have you thought about trying to give her another cat nap in the arvo. If she wakes up at 4 and is happy playing til about 5, instead of giving her a bath then, let her have a cat nap, just one sleep cycle. After she wakes then give her a bath and go through the night time routine and she'll be in bed about 7. It's a routine that works for us and the cat nap doesn't affect DD2's night sleep.

Good luck with your dinner tonight :)

Two cat naps in a row?? I didn't think that they did that. E.g. 1 cap nap and then into big sleep cycle?

She did it again tonight but what made it worse was we had guests. I had to wake her at 5pm as she was still asleep so she woke, had a little play, had a bath, had a bottle, played a little more and then about 6.15pm she started to grizzle and show tired signs, so I wrapped her up and put her in bed. Same thing happened. I tried settling her for over 30 minutes until i gave up as I needed to cook dinner for my guests.

About 7:15pm again she was grizzling and showing tired signs so i tried again, still no joy and out she came again. Once she is out of the bedroom she is happy as larry but is still demonstrating her normal every day tired signs that I use as my queue during the days for her sleeps. 3 times I've tried putting her down tonight and I've tried everything from leaving a light on to putting on her fan but still no good. And it can't be from the smell of cooking as she started with it tonight before I'd even started cooking.

It's now almost 8.45pm and she is finally in bed and asleep..

How on earth do other mum's deal with dinner time and making sure dinner is cooked but getting their bubbas into bed!!! I really have no idea what to try with this but it's making dinner time a real difficult time. Hubby works and is doing 15 hour days some days and I don't want him having to wait till after 8pm to get his dinner and then having to deal with her screaming while I'm trying to get her to sleep. Again tonight I've just given in and bought her out into the loungeroom and is shuts her straight up.

Shouldn't she be tired by this time!!!!!!

Oh I have just gone through the EXACT same thing with my DD. It started at about 3 months, then when she hit 5 months it stopped overnight....

My DD doesn't sleep much during the day, 2-3 1hr naps is all I get from her. She is wrecked by 5.30-6pm so it's bath, feed and bed by 6.30pm-ish. She would always wake screaming about 30 mins later and we'd get her up, she'd sit happily in her bouncer while we ate dinner. Then I would feed her again and finally get her down by 9pm by walking laps of her bedroom rocking her (which I never had to do before). She wasn't sleeping through either, i'd DF at 10.30pm, she'd wake for feeds sometimes at 1am, always at 4am, then 7am, then back to bed until 8am-9am.

I am happy to say now, almost overnight she has settled. Sleeps from 7pm till 8am (I DF at 10.30pm & she wakes for a feed at 6am). No magic formula just time.

My only advice is:

Don't let her sleep after 4pm - I tried that and it took me so much longer to get her to sleep at night.

Do what you need to do to get her to sleep. Even if you think you're making a 'rod for your back' by rocking, patting, feeding to sleep you need to get her back into her routine. Now my DD doesn't need those things as much to get to sleep.

Prepare dinner during the day. It takes so much of the stress out of the evening when DH is hungry, DD is hungry, the dog is hungry!! If dinner is ready just to put in the oven you can concentrate on DD. I make lasange, crumbed chicken, pasta bake, curry etc, cut up all of the vegies and put it in the fridge until evening. Much easier.

Good luck, ride the storm it will pass! :D

Ok so today I did just as Kristin suggested, no sleep past 4pm.. So she had a very small feed and then played for awhile. i took her outside for fresh air. She had a bath. I got her another bottle and by then it was 6pm and she was barely keeping her eye lids open. So she fell asleep half way through the bottle so I kept burping her to wake her up and finish it but she only got through about 80ml. So i wrapped her and into bed at 6pm on the dot!! We had dinner and now at 7pm as predicted and like clock work I hear her cry, tried settling her, tried again, and again and no luck. So i made her a 60ml bottle to see if she was hungry, she drunk that and is now WIDE awake sitting watching "Three and a Half Men". I can hear her she is coo'ing and ahh'ing away and DH is sitting laughing at her.. I don't see the point leaving her screaming in her cot if she isn't going to sleep. She isn't even showing any tired signs at the moment..

If she is supposed to be awake then that is fine but aren't bubba's supposed to be asleep for their "overnight" sleep by this time.. ahhh.. See what time I manage to get her to sleep tonight..

He he Belinda I just got DD back down too! I put her to bed at 6.30pm, she fell asleep while having her feed, then at 7pm she woke crying, well screaming. I tried settling but she wouldn't have it so I got her up, tried more BB- not interested. So I just dimmed the lights, did the walk and pat then put her in her cot when she was calm, now she's asleep. At least you're not alone!

How did the dinner time madness go? Or do you celebrate fat a$$ friday like us and get take out??!!

Brock tends to eat 3 hourly - so 6/7, 9/10, 12/1, 3/4, 6/7.

Mostly I put him in his rocker in the lounge or on the floor on some towels with DF watching while I do dinner. Depending on what time he had his last feed he either has his bottle just before we eat or just afterwards. He then goes into his cot after dinner. He rarely wakes once he goes to bed unless he wakes hungry in the middle of the night. Occasionally he kicks up a stink during dinner or whilst cooking but generally he's quite happy to either lie there or sit there. Sometimes he's asleep, other times he's watching TV.

Sorry just updating this one as I'm still having this problem with DD.

It's now been going on for weeks and weeks and I'm not sure what else to try.. Tonight hasn't been too bad in that she went to bed at about 8.20pm and is still asleep, but who knows for how long.

It seems she becomes another baby between 6pm and 9pm.. I'm finding some nights she won't be in bed before 9.30pm or 10.00pm..

One thing I've done differently tonight is I've left a little lamp on in her room. She seemed to go straight off to sleep so I'm wondering if anyone has encountered an issue with bubba being scared of the dark (even at 15 weeks old???) and if so what they did to resolve long term.

Reason I took this way of thinking is 1) I'm running out of other suggestions and 2) she sleeps perfectly and without issue during the day, so only real change is that it's dark.

I'm also wondering that if the light solves the night time problem, if I leave it on all night would it potentially mean she will sleep through till the morning?? I'm wondering if she wakes during the night and gets scared so then a feed is comforting for her as well as getting cuddles during her feed??

Please tell me if I'm potentially way off base because I'm running out of ideas on what to do..

snowchickie TBH our evenings here are a bit of a shambles at times. it can be very tricky trying to organise dinner with a 3 month old wide awake :o Often I let her stay awake between her feed at 6.30 and last feed at 9.30, simply because its easier than trying to settle her when she doesn't want to sleep and I need to make dinner. :wall: Although she is usually pretty happy playing on the floor with her toys. It is a lot easier actually if we are out somewhere, then she can stay awake and be entertained, and get a feed and go to bed when we get home. This week she has been sleeping during that break (mostly) but I think it's mainly cause she is having a wonder week and is absolutely exhausted. Sorry haven't got much to contribute except empathy! :hug:

I leave the lamp on in DD's room between bedtime at 7pm and her dream feed at 10.30pm. After that the lamp goes off and she doesn't seem to mind but I use it to let her know where in the routine were up to (evening).

Perhaps the lamp will help your DD because she will know where she is when she wakes up?

We've just had a break through after about two months of struggling with sleep. Now when we put DD down for a nap or at bedtime, we wrap have a little walk and cuddle, then into bed and I sit on the floor so she can still see me, and put my hand through the bars of the cot and pat the mattress next to her head (quite hard to a heartbeat). It's takes about 20 minutes for her to nod off, she cries (she always cries when going to sleep -her way of winding down), then whinges, then puts her head to the side and goes to sleep. If she gets really worked up I pat really loud and make a shhhh-ing sound. If she wakes again I go back in and do the same and she goes straight back to sleep.

Before this I would pick her up when she cried, walk, pat, rock, sing and feed trying to get her to sleep, I now realise that crying isn't her needing me to pick her up, it's her winding down, so when I picked her up I just disrupted her - doh!

Snowchickie- my DD did EXACTLY the same as yours for months from around 3 to 6 months and it drove me/us bananas. She was just never settled for the night until 10/11pm no matter what we did. She would go down at 6.30 or 7 and then wake up about half to 1.5 hours later, be wide awake and then hours later would settle down easily to sleep. And like you, I agonised over what was wrong/was was going on with her/what was I doing wrong etc and in the end, I figured I had no control over it. We played with her day sleep times, feed times, amount of milk, stimulation, feeding to sleep, patting, singing, dummy, nightlight etc etc to no avail. We even went to sleep school and still nothing changed. We were so puzzled as we didn't think it was normal and never heard of anyone else's bub doing that. Finally we just had to accept that's how she was and dealt with it how we could. Like others said, prepare dinner during the day etc and just take it as it comes. One day DD stopped doing it and is now a 12 hour sleeper which is unbelieveable given what we went through every evening.

KatieRabbit - Glad to hear someone else has experienced it also but not so great that nothing to resolve it.

DD hasn't been too bad lately I must say. We seem to be getting more of a predictable pattern going which i can handle. If I know to expect it then I'm more prepared and don't struggle with trying to settler her if I just know she isn't ready. She seems to be fighting her tired signs less now whereas before she was showing obvious tired signs but just wouldn't go to bed. We've left the night light idea on which seems to have helped somewhat.

She has been having random 1hr naps in the mid afternoon. Then she is up for a little while and I usually give her a snack and a bath. Then down again for another 1hr nap around 6pm which is great as I then go and cook dinner. She then is waking around 7pm and is up and I feed her again and she sits in her rocker for awhile and then back to bed. I think essentially she is tired, as she is usually not her cheerful self, but she may just be trying to cluster feed a little also..

We've had her out and about a few nights this week but she has handled it well. She is now at least asleep around 8.00-9.00pm and stays asleep till about 2-3am when i feed her and then back to sleep till anywhere between 7am-9am..

She had her first dinner out at a restaurant this week and didn't get to bed till 10pm so she then slept through till 4.30am and then through till 9am which was just wonderful and gave me such a good chunk of sleep. The next night we then picked her up from my parents around the same time and bought her home and straight off to sleep again.

Tonight she was asleep at 7.30pm and I went to get some groceries expecting her to get back up when i was gone, but she has stayed asleep.

Earlier this week she had 2 days where she woke for breakfast, was awake 1.5-2.0 hours and then went back to bed for only an hour. Normally after breakfast she'll sleep till lunch time (a good 2-3 hours) but she was waking after one sleep cycle. I soon figured out though that she was waking and not resettling herself so on day 3, i popped her dummy back in and she resettled and back off to sleep, problem solved and hasn't done it again.

I feel like she is trying to prepare herself to sleep through so I'm just trying to run with it and see what she does.

Can anyone advise at what age that it should be expected that a baby will sleep through up to 12 hours?? I guess I don't want to have expectations of her that aren't realistic but I have spoken to numerous people whose babies are sleeping 10hours+ at night but I'm guessing they are just very lucky cases..

To be honest, I don't think that there's any age that a baby should be expected to sleep through. Some do, some don't. My DS is 12 months old and still goes to bed at 10:30 or later each night, and has been sleeping through for between about 7-9 hours for the last couple of weeks. But that is not the norm around here - prior to that he was waking anywhere from 1-4 times a night. Teething has been the main culprit; since I've been using a teething necklace he has been sleeping through, but never for longer than 8-9 hours.

Some babies / children may sleep through at certain times but go through stages where they don't, for a number of reasons. It seems that it is more common to not sleep through than it is to sleep through.