QuoteReplyTopic: sleeping back to normal? Posted: 12 September 2011 at 3:16pm
hey guys,
my little girl was a great self settler at 8 weeks old. She then started sleeping 10-12 hours a night at 17 weeks old. Everything was going great with her sleeping until about 10 weeks ago. She got sick with vomiting. From then on she has had an assortment of sickness's all ranging from chest infection, ear infection, cold, cough, diarrhea ect ect. She now has a viral infection. But is generally a happy girl.
Ever since she first got sick she has woken every night. It started with waking once or twice and it was due to her cough and blocked nose. But she doesn't really cough anymore and her nose is clear. She will usually wake anywhere between 1-4 times a night now. She is 9 months old and I'm getting quite effected by it. The weird thing is, I've tried picking her up and cuddling her. But if she gets put down without a bottle she will scream the house down.
So i give in and she always guzzles her bott down. I can put her down with no problems. During the day she eats less bottle and food then she use to. Before 10 weeks ago she would eat every 4-5 hours and take a good sized bott at 7pm that would take her through the night. Now we are lucky if she drinks more than 200mls at night.
I have also tried snacking with the bott more - so she gets more during the day. I've also tried feeding her more solids, but she will only eat what she wants. She is a good sized baby - so not under weight in any way. I have tried making sure she's really hungry before her 7pm feed, but will still only take 200ml or less. 2 nights ago she drank 300mls for the first time in 1o weeks, then vomited it all up :S.
Lately I've tried leaving her to cry and it works sometimes. But then she will wake up an hour later screaming. I know it's not a comfort thing as she will happily go down without a fuss after a bottle. any ideas?!?!? I'm so worried I'll have a 1 year old still waking.. Where did my sleeping through girl go??
If you wish to drop the night feeds, the way that worked best with DS1 was to slowly reduce the volume. So every second night drop the volume by 30 ml for every bottle at night. After a week you should notice the food being eaten during the day increasing again.
Other people have had success in watering the bottle down, but then you still have to reduce the watery volumes somehow too.
Once you reduce the night feeds you can help your girl to sleep longer / self settle through a few different methods, depending on your tolerance for crying and which methods work best for your family.
The less often you feed at night the less often your baby will have wind, which helps the chances of being able to self settle.
With DS2 I found that a dream feed at 10pm helped, it meant that *I* knew he wasn't hungry at 12 pm, so it helped me be able to try and settle him without feeding him.
From memory this was the age my two changed their sleeping pattern.
I was also going to suggest a dreamfeed at 10pm so then you would know when she woke in the night that she wasn't hungry and could go about teaching her to self settle again.
It's hard when they've been sick and even now with my girls after a bout of sickness they easily slip into night time waking habits.
Check out The Sleepstore website for techniques on teaching her to self settle again. We've used Verbal Reassurance with our girls with great success.
Oh and don't worry too much about the milk quantities. My girls would only drink 200mls on a good day, 250ml is the most they have ever taken.
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