Sleep Woes :-(

[hummingbird125]

First of all, I reeeally apologize for being completely MIA and then showing up and asking for advice. I'm at my wit's end and am reaching out to anyone and everyone in hopes that someone, somewhere, can tell me what the hell I'm doing wrong. My LO's nighttime sleep has been getting worse and worse.

Last night I lost track of how many times he woke up - it was more than 6. I have read so many sleep articles, and I feel like I'm doing everything I'm supposed to! He's on a good wake-time/nap schedule during the day. We separate nursing from sleep for all naps and for bedtime. We even put him down awake and he falls asleep on his own (we DO replace his pacifier if it falls out and we hear him fussing though, this could be our issue, I guess?). We swaddled until he started rolling (before 12 weeks, womp womp), and now he's in the Merlin Sleep Suit. The RnP helped a while ago, but it stopped helping by about 10 weeks, so we moved him to the crib. We use a white noise machine, the room is dark, etc. No matter what we do, he wakes up again and again and again at night, and the only thing that will settle him down is nursing. We tried a bottle of formula two nights ago before bedtime and had a better night than usual (only 3 wakeups instead of our regular 4), but then last night, despite doing the same thing, he woke up after an hour and 15 minutes past bedtime.

LO is a bit over three months old, and while I'd like to chalk it up to the 4 month sleep regression or a wonder week, his sleep has been awful since he was about 7 weeks old, and it just keeps on getting worse. Does ANYONE have any suggestions or ideas? We have a call out to his pediatrician now, and I'm picking up a swing I bought off CL (maybe it will help even though the RnP no longer works magic?)

[gratefulgirl]

OK, so my older kids were like this. Well, maybe worse since I remember 8 being the minimum number of wake ups for DD2. The getting worse part was the 4 mo. sleep regression.

Does he fall asleep in any way different from how he wakes up MOTN? A pacifier, for example? If so it maybe time to consider how/when to change that. We had to take DD2's pacifier away. On the pedi's advice we used Ferber at 4.5-ish months. After that she was up twice to eat until it became obvious she could night wean because she would not nurse well during the day. Since then I can count on one hand the number of times she has woken me MOTN and she is over 2.

Other ideas: try no Merlin, he may want more freedom. DD3 is in a sleep sack now at almost 15 weeks, though she slept like junk last night after STTN the night before. If he is not on 3 naps consider if he needs to be pushed to it and have more consolidated daytime awake time. Consider if bedtime might need to be tweaked earlier (if he gets too much awake time for his age or would start night sleep earlier) or later. DD1's bedtime was too early for her biological clock for a while and it messed up her entire night.

My kids aren't great sleepers so I am no expert. Take all this with lots of salt. Oh and time does help. It really, really does. He is little yet, even if it does not seem like it.

[shanny]

Responded in randoms with you tagged. We are using Merlin too.

[hummingbird125]

Nov 21, 2016 15:03:33 GMT -5 gratefulgirl said:

OK, so my older kids were like this. Well, maybe worse since I remember 8 being the minimum number of wake ups for DD2. The getting worse part was the 4 mo. sleep regression.

Does he fall asleep in any way different from how he wakes up MOTN? A pacifier, for example? If so it maybe time to consider how/when to change that. We had to take DD2's pacifier away. On the pedi's advice we used Ferber at 4.5-ish months. After that she was up twice to eat until it became obvious she could night wean because she would not nurse well during the day. Since then I can count on one hand the number of times she has woken me MOTN and she is over 2.

Other ideas: try no Merlin, he may want more freedom. DD3 is in a sleep sack now at almost 15 weeks, though she slept like junk last night after STTN the night before. If he is not on 3 naps consider if he needs to be pushed to it and have more consolidated daytime awake time. Consider if bedtime might need to be tweaked earlier (if he gets too much awake time for his age or would start night sleep earlier) or later. DD1's bedtime was too early for her biological clock for a while and it messed up her entire night.

My kids aren't great sleepers so I am no expert. Take all this with lots of salt. Oh and time does help. It really, really does. He is little yet, even if it does not seem like it.

Thanks for your input gratefulgirl!

So, we put him down with the pacifier for bedtime and for naptimes, but when he wakes up and nurses in the MOTN we put him back in the crib without it. Usually he nurses to sleep or at least is pretty sleepy by the time he's done, so we just plop him back into the crib and he usually falls asleep. We could try no Merlin, but I'm a little worried he'll flip over in it. Although he can roll, he doesn't have great control yet and really only goes left, so I'm worried he could roll over to the left side of the crib and be stuck face-down...

We did try consolidating his naps yesterday - did 3 instead of his regular 4, and did an earlier bedtime than usual, but had an awful, awful night. I know he's little and thing swill probably get better with time, but I just don't know how to hold onto my sanity between working, caring for him, and not sleeping :-(

[annbuhdan]

I know it's not for everyone, but have you considered bed sharing? I am having the same experience at night. Last night she woke and nursed 4 (or 5? I don't even know) times between 7:30 bedtime and 2am. I try to put her back into her crib so she can at least try it, plus I always have this *hope* that she'll sleep. When I can't take it anymore, usually around 3am, I put her beside me to sleep. It's not the most restful for me, but at least I get 3 hours or so in a row. With DD1, it all fell into place with time, despite everything I tried to get it right.

[shanny]

Nov 21, 2016 16:31:30 GMT -5 annbuhdan said:

I know it's not for everyone, but have you considered bed sharing? I am having the same experience at night. Last night she woke and nursed 4 (or 5? I don't even know) times between 7:30 bedtime and 2am. I try to put her back into her crib so she can at least try it, plus I always have this *hope* that she'll sleep. When I can't take it anymore, usually around 3am, I put her beside me to sleep. It's not the most restful for me, but at least I get 3 hours or so in a row. With DD1, it all fell into place with time, despite everything I tried to get it right.

After the last MOTN feed (~5 AM) I co-sleep as well.

[hummingbird125]

shanny, annbuhdan - I've actually tried to, but I just cannot fall asleep when he's in bed with us - it seems too crowded with us plus the dog, and I cannot relax.

Anyways - we gave his pedi a call last night and explain the issues we were having, and he prescribed Zantac, saying it sounded like reflux. We did one dose before bed last night and he definitely slept better - and when he woke up he was just fussy, not SCREAMING. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this turns out to solve our problem and at least help him sleep like a "normal" baby. We were still up 4x last night, but that was still SO much better than two out of the past 3 nights! He also did a stretch over 3hrs (his last one, odd) - and I cannot remember the last time he slept that long.

[shanny]

hummingbird125 fingers crossed!