Frequent Waking at Night

Firstly, you've done nothing wrong

She's possibly going through her 3 month growth spurt.
I know Hannah was unsettled for about 3 days at 12 weeks, and again at 14 weeks, but soon came right.

I hope she settles soon

Aw hugs hun. I've not really got any advice but Im wondering if getting rid of the dummy may help, depending of course if thats the reason why she is waking up. Did she used to suck on her hands before you gave her the dummy?

How many times during the night is she feeding now?

Hope it resolves for you soon xx

Thanks Mel&Kel

Not sure on the growth spurt now, since you say it's been happening for 2 weeks. But I like the other ladies' ideas

I really hope things get easier soon. It's so hard when they go from being so good to just really out of character like that with no obvious reason!

If she settles with the dummy even without you feeding her, then I'd be inclined to just pop it back in. Eventually she will get co-ordinated enough to find the dummy in the cot herself when it falls out - some things that can help with this are having one clipped on to her pyjamas or putting several in the cot around her head. That said, at 3 months she's a bit little to find her own dummy so you need to decide if it's worth persevering with if it means you getting up several times a night.

Sleep experts generally agree that sleep associations don't begin to form until around 4 months of age so you haven't done anything wrong by feeding her to sleep or giving her the dummy, at the end of the day you have to do what works for both of you.

I like someone else's suggestion re: swaddling with one arm out so she can find her thumb too. Lil miss has never had a dummy but when I stopped wrapping her with her arms in she immediately started sucking her thumb and still does.

Not that we're paying any attention to the baby whisperer after today's suggestions ("just resettle"...HA!), but I remember her saying today that sometimes when the dummy falls out just the sound of it can wake some babies....
Although I doubt it would be that since Eva was such a good wee sleeper. Here's hoping it's just a long drawn out growth spurt that ends soon so you can get some sleep!

Mel, if I get Cam into bed at the right time i.e. I catch his tired signs before he's suddenly overtired, he can now go to sleep without his dummy, but if he's overtired I have to cuddle him, put his dummy in and stroke his forehead til he starts to drift off.
If Eva is showing her tired signs, then by all means put her to bed. You'll notice she'll start staying awake slightly longer soon, I reckon.

I remember recently reading a section in the "Baby Whisperer" book by Tracy Hogg about some babies becoming habitual wakers - is she waking at particular times, or is it random?

We are just getting rid of the dummy here, I'm not sure that is the cause of our problem but I figure best to get rid of it now before he gets too attached to it. Kyle sleeps fine during the day, sometimes needs resettling but mostly doesn't, but at night the fun begins. He goes to bed at 7pm without his dummy and goes to sleep fine as he is usually very tired at that point then he will sleep till anywhere between 9pm and 2am...lol...has a feed, then sometimes another feed at 3ish if he's woken early. So that's fine I dont' mind getting up to feed after all he is still only 4 months old but from 4am he needs constant resettling, I put the dummy in he goes back off for 10 mins, then I have to put it in again and again and again and again and again and again and......well you get the point!. If I try feeding him, not interested, pulls off and laughs at me the cheeky monkey. So I either put him in bed with me which sometimes keeps him happy or we end up getting up at like 5-6am which is a killer, especially when in reality I have actually been awake since 4am cos of all the dummy replacements.
Kyle is still fully swaddled, which he seems to enjoy and have tried leaving one arm out instead of giving him the dummy but he got the hump about that so instead during the day now I am doing shshing and patting and white noise but only if necessary (if that makes sense). So far we are going quite well in the mornings but the afternoons sleep are sometimes a little tough to get out of him. I have no idea if it will help with the night wakings but at least I feel like I am doing something....lol. I also took him to an osteo yesterday, he was engaged for a long time and then a vontouse delivery so thought it was a good idea to have him realigned. He seemed to like it but was a little bit unsettled yesterday afternoon which she said was normal, so fingers crossed today will be better, although as i have been up since 4.30am I'm not getting too excited!

Man I have waffled on, sorry! Anyway not to scare you or anything but Kyle use to sleep from his 10pm dreamfeed until 4am then back down till 7am, all this nonsense waking started after the 12 week growth spurt

We had major sleep issues with M and had to hire a sleep therapist as she was awake 16 hours per day. Her worst day was 20 hours awake. It cost us an arm and a leg for the therapist but she slept 14 hours last night and is back in bed for another 2 hour nap (hopefully lol). She would sleep some nights but out of pure exhaustion and suffered from fatigue that saw her admitted to hospital.

Basically, what we learned is that sleep and resettling is not a natural skill for all babies. It's something that can also come and go depending on what phases they go through. M still has bad days and even bad weeks but now we have the skills to put her back on track.

There is a small amount of controlled crying involved but not to the extent of leaving them to cry themselves to sleep which was what I couldn't handle. When she woke, we would crawl into her room so she couldn't see us and pat her tummy to try to get her to calm down (stopped using dummy at this stage as it was driving us bonkers). If that didn't work (and usually didn't in the early days) I would park the vacuum outside her room with her door open. It can go in their rooms but the exhaust can be a bit smelly and dusty. Then I would start the patting again. I burnt the motor out in the vacuum so now have motorway noise recorded to MP3 wired up in her room. It's flimmin loud and I use it for every day sleep. The whole idea is to give her the reassurance that you are there and she is loved, without using the dummy. There is usually some crying that goes with it but it's more cause she's not getting what she wants, which is the dummy. After a short while, the cry comes down to a grizzle then they should start to drift off to sleep. The first three days is the hardest but our problem was fixed within two weeks. Now we get about 17 hours of sleep per day.

I know not everyone likes the CC idea but this is a way to do it without the concept of leaving her alone. We tried it when we were desperate but she would go on and on and on........ It seemed such a violent way to go to sleep to me and I couldn't cope with it. With the patting and the vacuum (or any white noise quite loud) meant I could be right there with her helping her to learn to settle rather than trying to force her to do it herself.

If you think this might work for her to get over this rough patch, feel free to PM me if you have any questions.