Sleeping - Cornelia, GA

My son, who is almost a year old, did the same thing! He was an excellent sleeper from birth until about five months old, then he stopped sleeping through the night. (SIGH) I hope someone has answers for you ... we never did work it out. With a few rare exceptions, we haven't slept through the night in months. Good luck to you!

Could be a growth spurt or has he learned to do something new like rolling over from his back to his belly?? Just keep up with your usual bed time routine and try not to go running to him in the middle of the night. That may start a bad habit that is harder to break than it is to start!! If he seems hungry in the middle of the night, try feeding him more at his last feeding of the night and see if that helps. It will pass!!

Good luck
S.

Hello L.! As a mother of five I have experienced the best sleepers and the worst! My oldest daughter didn't sleep through the night until she was four! I to think it is just a growth spurt. I found that adding a little cereal to their last bottle before bed time really helped a lot!! Keep up the great work you are doing a great job. I promise this to will pass. Enjoy every minute with your little one!!:)

J.

It's probably a growth spurt or teething, or both! If nursing, try to cluster feed before bed, and then understand that he'll get back to his usual pattern soon. I know it's hard to realize when you're sleep deprived, but this will be over soon, and you'll be getting better sleep. By the way, he was mighty 'above average' to begin with, as far as sleeping for such a long stretch at his age. My girls didn't sleep 7 hour stretches until they were almost a year old. A great resource is Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution. You should find it at most book stores. Good luck!!

This may sound like a no brainer but for me my 3 month old started waking up at 4 am to eat since its been hot I let her sleep in a diaper and wrapped her in a blanket. deciding maybe she was cold I started putting her in cotton footy pjs and wraping her in the blanket and she is sleeping in till 9am. (Just a thought) other things. I am cluster feeding before bed she will wake at 4 from her after noon nap I feed her, then I feed her again around 6:30 and put her down at 7 I then wake her for a dreamfeem anywhere from 10 to 11. Then right back to bed. Make sure your baby burps well before putting back to bed. Could be teething, if you are nursing he could be trying to up your milk supply. Hope this helps good luck.

My son is 3 months too and doing the same thing. It is just a growth spurt. He is probably trying to up your milk supply.

I would make sure you burp him a lot before you put him back down.

This will pass soon. My daughter did the same thing.

hi L.,
how are you today? im good.
what i do dont let him take long naps thur the day but if he really needs it let take nap about 30 mins it will help.
beause i have 3 kids my youngest 4 and he take nap about 30-45
mins day. then when he finshin play a game that he like and do the same thing everyday so he know what going on beause i done this to my kids i been doing it almost 10 yrs.
i hope this helps. i be pray for you. god bless youll...
take care.... try reading a book
I.

Both of my children did this and we found out it was teething. It affects more than you know. I have seen babies who got their first teeth at 3 months as well. We started giving ours 2-3 Hylands Teething Tablets right before bedtime and it was like a miracle had been performed.

Growth spurts often cause a baby to change his/her pattern. You are lucky, my daughter didn't sleep 3-4 hrs straight still she was about 4 months old (breast fed, up every two hrs the first 3-4 months! yuck!) Just make sure it's not to hot/cold in his room, see if he's waking up at the same time every night. Is he hungry or does he have a dirty diaper? Those things will help if you talk to your dr.

Speak to your pediatrician. I wouldn't take advice about cereal in baby's milk (old wives tale) or other things. I also feel the dr knows best besides you. Every baby is different and you know your baby best.

Hi L.,
I am first time Mom too. My 5 month old has had this trouble as well since about 3 months old. She wants to be up at 1 or 2 am and eat and play, no matter how much we feed her at the last nightly feeding. We have made the room cool (she is hot natured), and have a fan with a constant noise. She can be asleep sometimes from 7:30 -1:30 and then sometimes from 9:00 - 4:30. We have tried different things, and nothing is consistent with her. They say to feed them the heaviest bottle at night, but that only lasted a short while. We were doing breastmilk in the day, formula at night hoping the formula would satisfy her longer...no such luck. We continue to do that and are now feeding her cereal and baby food to help. Still, I am up at 1:30 most mornings for a short bottle and she'll go back to sleep for about 3 hours...I am looking for the same advice you are.
A.

L.,

Your child is changing and growing every day and so to will his sleep patterns. I remember the day that mine slept throught the night for the first time. I awoke ---it was after 7pm---- and I thought he had died because he had never slept throught the night. He was 18 months old. He was a sickly child.

Babies change and as they do their need for sleep changes. Also babies go through growth periods and during this time (5-7 days) they do not sleep well because their bodies will grow about 1/2 to 1 inch over night! It is a huge thing to grow this much in 24 hours. I was always thinking they grew in miniscule bits at a time but was enlightened by my doctor. Leading up to this time their are HUNGRY, CRABBY and their sleep patterns are way off. This might be the cause. Another cause might be that teeth are eurupting and waking him up and the pain is causing him to not be able to settle back down. Also, it could be foods that will cause dreams to be more vivid and make him wake up (cheese and dairy were the bad guys for my kids). Another reason is that as the seasons or tempature changes, hot to cold or cold to hot, so does a child's sleep patterns. Have you been experiencing rainy or stormy nights. Has the season become more hot or more cold?

I also note that my older children would begin to wet the bed when the weather turns cold for that third week in October. The body is now working harder to stay warm and they are in a deeper sleep and just don't wake up and so they wet the bed even though they have been dry for years!
So in conclusion.
1. growth peroids
2. teeth coming in
3. seasonal change
4. diet change
5. body need less sleep due to getting older

By watching your child and noting what has changed in his little world you will be able to see what has caused the effect of sleep change. REMEMBER there is always a reason for a change in your child, you just have to be aware of the changes in his daily life to notice why things are changing. The last reason a baby may have his sleep patterns change is he is missing you! Has your daily time with baby changed? No matter the reason the truth is babies are not going to sleep all the time like they did when they were infants-long periods. As they grow their brain needs less sleep and they have more frequent awake times. Good luck! As my mother of seven children always told me SLEEP WHEN YOUR BABY SLEEPS-no matter the time!
Keep Mothering!
Ms C.

3 months is still very young so be patient with him, and yourself! That is great that he was already doing 7 hour stretches. He might be waking up because he is becoming more alert and aware of his surroundings, so you might have to "let him cry it out" to train him that he needs to roll over and go back to sleep versus cry for mommy to come in and hold him. However, he might be going through a growth spurt and need extra feeding. I would feed him for a few nights and if this goes on for more than about a week, longer than a growth spurt would last, then you can try letting him cry (so hard to do!!!) so that he will learn to go back to sleep. This is what we did with our son, now 13 months. He started sleeping through the night (10pm to 7am) consistently around 10 weeks but since then he has gone through phases of waking up at night and we have had to break the cycle by letting him cry (when we knew he wasn't hungry, or shouldn't be hungry, and we had checked on him several nights in a row and saw that he was totally ok, ie. no arm caught in the crib).

So that is my two cents worth, from my experience! Good Luck!

L....there is one thing for certain and that is as soon as you THINK you have a baby's schedule figured out (sleeping, eating, anything), it will change. Almost like it's bad luck to think that you are actually on a good schedule cause you will jinx it. Their bodies are changing and growing so rapidly that there will be periods when there seems to be no schedule and then things will settle down again into a predictable schedule. This may happen occasionally. Just have a good pediatrician and keep him informed about anything weird or persistent and otherwise, just "go with the flow" and be flexible.

Give him a good bath, make sure he is full and dry before bed and he should sleep well. Hope this helps.

hello my name is J. mother of 3 girls. Your child is probably having a growth spurt. I love the book Healthy sleep habits for healthy children, it realy helped me a lot with all of my girls. :), J.

when our daughter was that age i would "dream feed", she had a great, very consistent bedtime routine, go down around 8PM and then at 10PM i would gently pick her up and feed her a bottle. she would not even wake up. this seemed to get her through the night. she would then sleep until 6A. sometimes when kids have growth spurts, gas, teething pain or are physically more active, it can interrupt their sleep. now she has 5 teeth coming in all at once so she too went from being a great sleeper to waking up once a night (she sleeps 12 hours uninterrupted, and is 16 months). so just hang in there, it is very common for kids to go through phases where they wake and then sleep through the night, i would try gas drops before bed (mylicon)and doing the dream feed around 10PM.
good luck!!
S.

It could be several things, one being a growth spurt. These usually happen around 3-6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months. I nursed both of mine and each of them went through the same thing your son is going through right around 3 months also. Try feeding him RIGHT before laying him down for the night. Also, you could try a pacifier during the night before laying him back down to help him stay settled. Try not to get discouraged. They often NEED the extra feedings at this age. The growth spurt will soon pass (week, MAYBE two) and he'll get back on track. Hang in there and congratulations on your new little bundle of joy!

My daughter will be 9 months old tomorrow and she did pretty much the same thing at about the same age. I thought it was teething trouble too, but here we are at 9 months and still no teeth. I agree that it could be a growth spurt. Babies go through weird stages like that.

Right now, he is a little too young to learn how to go to sleep on his own and stay asleep the whole night. The best thing to do right now is to establish a bedtime routine (if you haven't already) that you do EVERY NIGHT. This is very important as babies take their cues from their routines and environment and associate certain events (like baths) with sleep/bed time. Also, make sure that he is getting as much of his daily breast milk/formula needs in during the day. The more he eats during the day, the less he will need at night. And no, cereal in the bottle will not help, believe me. I've tried it all! :-)

By about 4-6 months, if he is still waking like this, you should start working on teaching him how to go to sleep on his own and stay asleep all night. I highly recommend the book, "Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems," by Richard Ferber. I used Dr. Ferber's methods on my daughter just recently and she sleeps 11-12 hours beautifully now.

Hi, L.!
I had the same problem with both of my babies. In our case, they were hungry! That's about when I started feeding them cereal from one of the bottle-feeders. That helped to keep their little bellies full and they slept much better. I would check with your pediatrician should you decide to start him on cereal, just to make sure it's okay. Good luck!

teething? Try baby teething gels.

I hate to say this, but it could be he is moving from being an above average sleeper to being an average sleeper. None of my five babies ever slept more than 3 or 4 hours at a time at that age. They were close to a year old before they ever 'slept through the night.' However, I'm guessing your son will go back to his stellar ways soon. Hang in there and try not to let him develop bad habits in the meantime.

My kids all did that off and on throughout their first year when they were experiencing a growth spurt. They were just so hungry during the night that their stomachs woke them up. This, too, shall pass, although it's hard to have faith in that when you're up AGAIN at 2 am and can't keep your eyes open! Best wishes.

Growth spurts are very common at 12 weeks (3 months), and some babies begin teething this early. (My son began teething at eight weeks, but he didn't get his first tooth until he was almost six months.) Our pediatrician said that you can usually tell what is going on by the times the baby wakes. If the baby wakes at the same time every night, then it could be a habit forming. If the times that he wakes vary, then it is probably teething or a growth spurt. During growth spurts I would dream feed my son at around 10 p.m., and that really helped, since it gave him extra calories. For teething pains I have been giving my son Hyland's teething tablets and gl since the age of two months. They work wonders! I hope this helps. I know the lack of sleep can be frustrating and exhausting. Good luck; I am sure you are doing a great job!