advice- really bad night not sure why

[dizzymeg]

Hi all
Up till last week olly was sleeping great at night, then he got a cold and obviously couldnt breath properly etc so his sleep was disturbed. He seems pretty much over this cold, other than a cough and some red skin around his eye, which i posted about but no one responded. They are still there.

Anyway, last night he woke up every 30 min from 4am onwards, crying in his sleep, not awake at all, would stop as soon as we picked him up. No idea what was wrong with him, he seemed to be able to breath fine.

He was trying to suck on his fingers though. Could he be teething? could this be affecting his sleep - seems odd to only be from 4 am though? He is 23 weeks old, but 6 weeks prem. Could he need weaning? is this what babies do when they teeth or need to wean? Not sure

Really need some advice

Plus I am shattered

Thanks

M
xx

 

[ILoveShoes]

Hiya!
We are having a similar situation. My LO is 5 months, but was 5 weeks prem. He was sleeping through up until Saturday when we put him in his own room... He is now waking lots and lots through the night. I'm like a zombie today.
I'm really sorry, I've not got any advice for you, I just wanted you to know that you're not alone.
xx

 

[ILoveShoes]

I meant to say, my LO is always sucking his hands too. I think he's teething aswell. Personally, I wouldn't take it as a sign of needing weaning yet.
xx

 

[CMIL]

What I have finally learnt now LO is 9.5 months is that you just cant explain this stuff. My LO had been sleeping through consistantly for about 10 weeks when all of a sudden at 4.5 months he just stopped. He was up through the night a minimum of 3 times and up to 16. I was tearing my hair out. It last for 2.5 months during which time I questioned everything it could possibly be, started weaning him, gave him fomula sometimes instead of breatfeeding and at 6 months even tried controlled crying a little bit. Nothing made a difference. Then after 2.5 months, just as quickly as it had started, he stopped and started sleeping through again. A week ago he was doing great and had started sleeping from 6pm until 7.45am and now he is waking again a few times a night.

You can never be sure why they do it and trying to second guess drives you mad. All I did was try to limit any bad habits when they are in a period of night waking (e.g. picking them up all the time, try to soothe while they are still in their bed if possible, starting to feed again through the night when previously you had weaned them off it - this is after 6 months of course when they no longer need night feeds) so that once they were over the issue, whatever it was, they went back to sleeping through.

The only thing you can do is comfort and tend to them, try not to get stressed as that will make them worse, and catch up on your rest. Even if that means going to bed at 7pm. It wont last too long!

 

[dizzymeg]

thanks ladies, it was more that I wanted to check i wasnt missing something important that might be going on, first time around everything is a mystery!
lets see what happens tonight!
x

 

[GingerNut]

CMIL, that sounds like the four month sleep regression. Some of the well known routiney books say that rearranging their daytime routine so they stay awake for longer periods between naps, and take slightly longer naps, helps to avoid this. We changed our daytime routine around that time and didn't have major problems at night, but that might have been total coincidence!

DizzyMeg, finger chewing can be a teething thing; DD does it all the time but more when she's teething. Are his cheeks red? Is he dribbling more than usual? Maybe try giving him Nurofen if it happens again and see if that settles him; if so, you'll know it's teeth.

I don't think it's that he needs solids. If he was hungry he'd wake up. Even if he did wake from hunger at that age I'd just give him more milk rather than start solids - solids don't actually make any difference to nighttime sleep, in this house anyway!