What's your bedtime routine? Mine were doing 3-4 hour stretches until we started one. They sleep in RNP's but we moved them to their room - that helped a ton actually. About 7 pm they either get a bath or I go straight to getting them ready for bed - jammies, file nails, lotion, swaddle. Get bottle and by 8 pm they are in their room. They sleep until 2.
Also mine eat every 3 hours during the day but in the evening cluster feed. Bottle at 5, another ounce or two (sometimes a full 100 ml bottle) around 6, they might take a cap nap depending on how the day went, and then last bottle at 730.
Does he take a binky? Try to get out of the habit of feeding him every time he wakes up. We will go in and give the binky and sometimes rock if needed. But I don't feed until at least 4. Once I started that he started sleeping through those wake ups. Try to get as much milk as possible in him during the day.
So, is he in your bedroom with the RNP? I would put him in the crib in his own room and see how that changes things.
Rnp beside the couch. H sleeps in the bed. When H takes the crap hours. The rnp goes in the bedroom
Especially with you going back to work, I would experiment with putting the baby in the crib. My DD had an improvement with sleep once she was switched, I think she needed more room.
So, is he in your bedroom with the RNP? I would put him in the crib in his own room and see how that changes things.
Rnp beside the couch. H sleeps in the bed. When H takes the crap hours. The rnp goes in the bedroom.
Ya time to move to his room. This is what we were doing since I assumed I was getting up anyway. They still sleep in RNP in their room but whether you do that or crib it isn't hard to get him in and out. Also I change diaper before each MOTN feeding. I know some say don't if they aren't poop but to me it helps wake them up so they eat better. Now they wake, diaper, takes them 10 minutes to drink bottle and they go right back to sleep. Even if they're awake when I lay them down they fall asleep on their own.
And ditto on letting him self soothe. Will he take a paci? Sometimes just getting up and tapping and sooshing will work. It might take a couple nights but he'll realize that he isn't hungry. Sometimes mine will wake a half hour before their normal feeding time and I don't move out of bed. Unless they're crying I leave them and they either talk to themselves for awhile or fall back asleep.
as far as the fussing leading to being hard to put down I haven't found that to be true. As soon as she eats she goes down quickly, regardless of how much she fussed before I got her. I would try to transition him to his crib. Like pp said, it can't get much worse than it already is. People have had a lot of success with the merlin sleep suit. It helped our sleep a small bit but she transitioned to her crib without any problems when I put her in the suit.
Don't have too much new to offer, but I went back to work at about 10 weeks and this is what we did. She went in her RNP in her room and we had an established bedtime routine. Bedtime is about 7pm. I only get her is she is upset, if she's just moving a bit or making some noises I see if she'll put herself back to sleep.
Also, I've noticed that her best sleep stretches are after she has put herself back to sleep. Not really sure why, but example last night she woke up at 7:45 crying. I waited 2 minutes (cause I wanted to watch a scene in a movie), she put herself back to sleep then slept another 10 hours. Obviously that is an extreme example (and not one that ever happens), but I've seen it in smaller streches of sleep also. Like it would get an extra couple of hours.
Are you swaddling with his hands up? Sometime when DS starts to fuss at night he'll find his fingers and suck on them until he falls back to sleep, or I'll pop the paci in his mouth. If those don't work I know he's hungry.
Post by undecidedowl on Mar 4, 2015 9:14:03 GMT -5
DS1 was that way too. My main survival trick was bed-sharing and side-lying nursing in bed. Since you are doing bottles I'm not sure if some of this will work but I will throw out ideas anyway. For the most part, I was never able to do anything to get him to sleep longer than about 2.5 hours so I had to focus on making the wake-ups as easy as possible.
It sounds like you are responding with a bottle every time he fusses? I know if I did that, DS1 would always eat. He NEVER turned down food, but that didn't mean he actually needed it every time. So when he started fussing I would give him a minute. If he kept going I would pat him or try the paci and sometimes that would get him back to sleep. At some point, I knew he didn't need to be eating every time he woke so I would just decide on when the next feeding would be and not feed until then.
Since I nursed, DH was responsible for all non feeding wake-ups. So maybe if he associates night bottles with you then he would know that the times your H gets him he should not expect food. If patting and paci didn't get him back down and it wasn't time to eat then DH would take him to rock in the glider or walk him in the house until he fell back asleep.
He's eating a lot during the day. It sounds like he's waking between sleep cycles (normal) and feeding him at that point has been your go-to. As others have said, let him try and settle himself and if he doesn't, then try other soothing techniques to get him back asleep. And definitely get him into his own room. We started off by putting the RNP right next to the crib, then segued into putting him in the crib for at least the first stretch of sleep. We just kept bumping it up from there until he expected to be put back into the crib every time.
Ditto linz about cluster feeding. I combo fed from the beginning, but I would try and fill up DD with as much as she would possibly eat from 5pm to bedtime.
Also ditto about a bedtime routine.
Does he wake up every 1.5 hours at night freaking out to eat? Or is he just fussing? If it's not like THIS IS AN EMERGENCY MOM crying, I might try and let him settle himself and fuss for a 5 minutes or so before feeding him.
Yeah we started letting M fuss for 5 min. at 10w. At first it seemed pointless because he *never* settled without help, but after a few weeks he started settling sometimes. We still Ferberized at 4.5m, and it was mostly successful.
Try all these things to get him sleeping more independently.
If they fail, consider bed sharing. DS did not respond to the suggestions here. He just... didn't. He didn't fuss and go back to sleep. He didn't do better in his own room. He was not interested in being away from me. At least in the same bed, I got more rest. I slept on a twin in the nursery with a bed rail for several months. It worked the best for us.
It was not the same with DD at all. She was a more "textbook" baby that responded to things the way she was supposed to. So if you try some of this stuff and it isn't working... you might just have a non-textbook baby. They exist.
Post by jeaniebueller on Mar 4, 2015 11:58:08 GMT -5
Good luck! You might be pleasantly surprised. WE did the crib from RNP transition and it went soooo much better than I anticipated and I had stressed out about it for the better part of my maternity leave.
Post by gerberdaisy on Mar 4, 2015 11:58:52 GMT -5
Good luck tonight! You might be really surprised. I slept on the couch with the RNP for what seemed like forever. Like you, I was so worried about making it worse that i didn't want to try anything. When I finally bit the bullet and did small changes I really wished that I had done more sooner. DD sleeps so much better now in the crib that in the RNP, she was ready to stop swaddling sooner that I stopped, and it was me that was worried about her sleeping in her own room, she was fine.
If nothing else, can it get much worse than waking up every 1.5 hours?
I don't mean to be snarky, but can it really get much worse? that's always been my motto when trying new things with my crappy sleeper.
moving him to the crib was a huge help though. his long stretch went from 2-3 hours to 4-5 pretty quickly. mind you, this was 7-11/12 so I had to go to bed early to catch any good sleep, but it was worth it for a while to gain back some sanity.
and, tough love here, you are training him to wake up frequently when you respond to his fussing quickly. give him a chance to settle himself. let him actually cry for a minute. if he's hungry, he'll settle quickly after eating. if he's up for other reasons he isn't going to go back down quickly whether you respond immediately or not.
At that age they calm down pretty easily with a feeding. Once you hit 5 or 6 months, or are night weaning, that gets a bit more tricky, but at this age I'd also let him fuss more before you get him up. Back in the golden weeks when ds2 sttn and took 3hr naps, he'd often wake up once an hour cry/fuss/whine/shift/grunt for 2mins, and go back to sleep. I only considered it a real wake up if he was crying urgently.