[longluncher]

Hi all, I'm worried that my bub isn't improving her sleep patterns. Currently she goes to sleep with no issues between 6.40pm and 7, I dream feed around 10.30pm then I'm up again for feeds at around 1.30 am, 3.30am then around 6am. She is shocking at taking day sleeps.. 40 minute cat naps twice a day if I'm lucky.

Can you spot if I'm doing anything obviously wrong? Other 3 month olds appear to be almost sleeping through by this age.

Thank you!

[Rach_V]

My 3 month old only catnaps during the day as well. He stretches out nicely at night though, this is our loose schedule:

He wakes for a feed any time between 6 & 7:30am, then goes straight back down for a sleep until 9 or 10:00. Then for the rest of the day he is basically awake for 1.5 hours, then down for a 40 min nap.

We do feed, play, sleep, so during the day he feeds 2 - 2.5 hrly unless he (very rarely) sleeps longer than 40 minutes.

Sometimes I have to tweak it a little bit so that his last nap for the day is sometime between 4 & 4:30.

Then at around 6 he has a bath, quiet time, feed and into bed by 7pm. He then wakes after 40-60 mins and I feed him again (trying to cut this out, without success. He usually feeds to sleep anyway, it's not a huge drama but would be nice to know I have 3 hours up my sleeve to go out for dinner etc!). Then he sleeps through til between 10 & 11, then feeds again at around 4/4:30am.

He will usually stir/grizzle between the 10:30pmish feed and 4:30amish feed but I just stick a dummy in his mouth.

Have you tried using a dummy overnight just to stretch her out that little bit longer between feeds?

Hope this helps. Babies have such varying degrees of sleep, I know it seems like a lot of them are "sleeping through" at 3 months, but in my experience, just as many (if not more) are still waking at least twice a night!

[KRT]

It doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong - it actually sounds like you're doing everything right! Some babies just don't sleep through until later, and 3 months is still pretty early in the grand scheme of things.

I found that day sleep started to consolidate into longer naps around 4-6 months. DS stopped feeding overnight at 8 months, all by himself - but we had supply issues and he was underweight, so we weren't normal there.

If it were me, I probably wouldn't mess with things, but everyone is allowed to want more sleep and to try to change things to get more sleep, so here are some ideas:

- Try to get more feeds into your DD during the day (but you're limited here by the size of her tummy)

- Try to get your DH to settle her at either 10:30 or 1:30. I found that 10:30 feed was awful, since I didn't get any sleep beforehand and then was woken up at 1:30, then up for the day at 6am. I would be very gentle about it, but you don't know if it will work until you try.

- Try a dreamfeed before you go to bed, to see if you can eliminate the 10:30pm wakeup. I didn't find dreamfeed much use, but other people find they work

- Maybe consider introducing a bottle of EBM for your DH to give your DD at 10:30. Expressing I found took up a lot of extra time and effort, and you have to get your DD to actually take to the bottle. Some babies won't have a bar of it, and some love the bottle so much you can't get them to go back to breastfeeding. At 12 weeks, though, BFing should be well established so you should probably be okay to give it a go.

Also, remember that what other babies 'appear' to be doing is not necessarily the truth. Some people use different definitions of sleeping through, some people just forget what actually happened (especially grandparents) and some people just say it as if that will make it true for them.

Good luck

[froglett]

Sounds pretty normal to me op. I think at this age in reality there are very few babies who *actually* sleep through the night.
Ds is 11 weeks, and he seems in the last week to have just gotten into this pattern:
Day time sleeps, he has 4, 3 that are about 1 hour, then a bigger one in the middle of the day, typically around 2.5-3 hours.
Nightime, he goes to bed about 7.30, then will sleep through till 12.30-1.30. This is a recent development, as previously he was waking at 10.30 as well. Then wakes at 4, feed, then back to bed, then wakes at 6ish. Night feeds are good, in that he feeds, then straight back to sleep.
Before he goes to bed of a night he seems to 'tank up', feeding at 4, 5, 6 and 7 (he only takes about 15 mins to feed these days), so I think this is getting him through and has helped drop the 10.30 feed.
We don't follow a routine as such, but we do have different patterns for day/night that I think have helped, e.g. Nighttime, no lights (just a nightlight that gives a very soft glow), feed, change nappy, feed, dummy, back to bed.
Daytime we follow feed, change nappy, play, feed, dummy, bed. Room has natural light (no blinds). We're also using the love to dream zip wrap things as a sleeping cue for day & night. He can only last around 1 hr being awake during the day.
We're also putting him down to sleep during the day awake (drowsy after a feed though). We've only started doing this the last couple of weeks, and its taken a while, but now he's pretty good at settling himself off. I don't feel comfortable letting him cry, so if he does we go back in to him and put a hand on his chest which usually settles him off (if not we pick him up). At the end of the day or if he's overtired this may not work, so for these times we get him to sleep in our arms then trf.

[meggs1]

I don't think you are doing anything wrong at all. It's just that all babies are different. A lot of the 3 month olds who are sleeping well now, will start waking again around the 4 month mark anyway.

Re the catnapping, try for a least 3 (maybe 4) catnaps so at least there's enough sleep in total. All the catnappers in my MG seem to start sleeping longer on the day from 4-5 months, no matter what we did (or didn't) do.

Re the nights, all you can realistically do at this age is keep up with your bedtime routine, going to bed drowsy but a little awake and maybe try to drop one of the overnight feeds by getting DH to settle. But I think 3 feeds overnight is still ok for that age. I definitely wouldn't try for less than 2 though.

A dream feed never worked for us. I think it just interferes with the development of the long deep sleep period which naturally occurs in the first part of the night. What happens if you don't do it? You might be better off just dropping it and going to bed really early for a month or so.

[bikingbubs]

Sounds normal to me, both my babies have been like this. It gets better in time (6/7 months from memory for the day sleeps and 8/9 months for sleeping through)

[missy78]

Yes, we have tried the dream feed here but it doesn't really do much except wake her up.

[belinda1976]

Sounds normal to me. Do you try and resettle during the day sleeps?

[Goggie]

I didn't really notice a longer nighttime sleep until 16-18 weeks, it wasn't the magical 3 month mark for us. Even then, he slept through the night from 7pm to 6am for about 3 weeks and then reverted back to 1-2 wake ups. DS is almost 6 months now and still feeds once overnight and needs to be resettled another time during the night (I try not to feed at every wake up at night).

He also catnaps during the day and has 3x 30-40 min naps, occasionally one of those will be an hour but usually they are very short naps. Today he will probably do 4 short naps as he was woken up by our neighbours just before as they were beeping the car horn right next to his bedroom window. Sigh..


But getting back to you, what you're doing sounds normal to me!

Other 3 month olds appear to be almost sleeping through by this age.

They 'appear' to be. They're not. Well, not many of them. In my mums group only 2 are sleeping through with no wake ups, the other 8 are not. You may have very lucky people surrounding you with great sleepers or they could all be full of BS.

This post has been edited by Goggie: 17/02/2013, 12:50 PM

[longluncher]

Thank you so much!! Fretting first timer mum here, appreciate it!!