3month old still won't sleep

C

curios

Registered User
My 3 month old still has very bad sleeping patterns. She is bf and formula fed during the day when and if I'm out. She seems to have a lot of gas and grunts, screams, pulls leg up during the night. She has 3x naps about 1 hour long and a 30 min cat nap before bed routine at 7. She can sleep 7 to 10 NO problem, it's after the night feed she goes hay wire.

She will wake up every hour or so grunting, pulling legs up etc, and I need to help her pass gas. She will eventually sleep once all the gas is out, but will get up again an hour later with the same thing.

I'm at my wits giving her gripe water, infacol, moving legs up and down, burping to get gas out, and getting very exhausted due to lack of sleep. Any advice? Getting really desperate.

Also have a whole lot of other sleeping issues /habits I need to break (ie rocking to sleep etc...) but I need to tackle it once this problem is resolved.

Thanks any positive advice would be appreciated.
 
food snesitivity?

Hi
Sounds like your little one is in pain to me? Could it be the formula - allergy or sensitivity to the protein? Or is it something you're eating and baby is irritated through breastfeeding? I would cut out reactive foods in my diet for a few days - and see if that makes a difference and the formula. Then introduce it and see if the symptoms are worse, no change etc. Lactose intolerance often gives gas and gripey pains. What's your LO's nappies like - smelly, runny, frequent, infrequent etc?

As for sleep, if your LO is uncomforatbe then it stands to reason he/she is looking for comfort to get to sleep and wakedsfrequently. Best to work on the pain issue first and then work on the sleep.

With the pain and gas, it may be also he/she is not feeding efficiently and consequently experiencing hunger pangs more often and sleeping less and settling less? Just a thought.
 
Our little man used to grunt a lot when he was a newborn. I thought it was gas, so I tried burping, infacol etc. But looking back now I don't think it was gas. At that stage he was sleeping next to our bed, and I think he was fretting, because as soon as I put him in bed snuggled up next to me he calmed right down. Now he sleeps in bed next to me and he sleeps well, and is much more calm and relaxed, even during the day! I know co-sleeping is not for everyone, but I think its very natural and nice for baby and mama. Good luck :)
 
Yeah, maybe take any gassy foods out of your diet to see if it's that and maybe check with formula? Gassy foods are usually things like broccoli, onions, maybe garlic, tomatoes...basically you need to be having bland foods for a bit just to test things out and then slowly add things back in to see if there's a change. How much food is she getting in the day? It's tough to know also because you're breastfeeding and formula feeding and that might affect your milk production.
 
When you are bottle feeding, which bottles are you using? There are some that you can get to prevent a lot of air being taken in when baby is sucking so it might be worth looking in to those.
 
Lactose intolerance? You need to go lactose free for 5 days to see if there is an improvement.
Formula has to be lactose free ( Cow and Gate/ pepti jr, or Neocate, both available at Fanda)
if you want some help, you can Pm me
 
Dear all, thanks for responses. switched formula to Infamil Gentlease and has helped a great deal. Also want to share that i give her DDS acidophilus once a day - this was recommended by a friend and boy did it change her completely. I highly recommend it. Can buy at Green Concepts on Wyndham St.

Now that the gas problem is gone, she has ofcourse gotten into habitual waking. She wakes up at 2am (used to be 3) for a feed. I feed her (BF), then she will wake up at 4, 5, 6 and cant fall back to sleep on her own.

Not sure if I should feed her at 4 or at 5. I would like awake time to be 7.

The other problem is she doesnt like to eat during the day - she prefers to play than eat - ofcourse impacting her sleep.

What to do?
 
Well, step 1 is out of the way. Lovely that she is not in pain anymore. That makes things easier. Looks like you have 2 things now here-she can't sleep on her own, and gets most of her nourishment at night so doesn't want it during the day. I would try to tackle the nourishment issue first. Can you hold out on her for milk during the night, little by little? You want her to drink more during the day instead.
But I'm the last person to talk to about babies going to sleep on their own. My son needed to suck to sleep for the first year, now my 8 week old seems the same.
 
My son had similar gas issues... and also reflux but luckily he grew out of it before he was three months, and also he alway slept at night (thank god) but was a bad napper during the day. Anyway, he had some funny poos so we took him in to the doctor and she asked how often we were feeding him. I couldn't say since I was feeding on demand. She suggested we try and space out the feeding to four hour gaps (well start with 3 hours) since he had crossed two months and was gaining weight well and feed him a little water in between if he cried too much. I was scandalised because I had read a) no water while breastfeeding b) feed on demand. But decided to give it a shot. Strangely, it wasn't that hard to do the scheduling... only the last hour was a little tough. But his tummy issues cleared up a lot. Her logic was that by constantly putting stuff into his system, it was getting overtaxed, with no time to rest. My point is, you could try holding him off with a little boiled nad filtered water at night...
 
Hi Curios, I had the same problem with my baby that he would never go back to sleep at night once he woke for a feed. When he was waking at 3:30 and 4:30 for a feed it was disastrous as I was then up until 5:30 or 6:30 when he got tired again and wanted to sleep. I tried co-sleeping for a while, bringing him into my bed to feed when he woke up in the night which worked better as I could doze, but the quality of my sleep was still pretty bad as every time he fell off my breast he'd wake up.

Anyway, I decided to try a sleep training book and it has worked really well. We always used to have to rock him to sleep before we put him in his cot but after following the book for just 3 days he goes to sleep on his own after just 5 or 10 minutes complaining. And also he goes to sleep after his night feed. The book recommendation is to wake him up around one hour before I think he will wake up himself. If I rouse him from sleep and feed him while he is still half asleep then he settles back down straight afterwards. I have done this for the past 3 nights, waking him at 2:30 to feed him, and he has gone down straight afterwards and slept through to 6am twice and 7am this morning.

Also the book says (as does my paediatrician) that at 4 months babies are physically capable of sleeping through the night so the waking is more habit than hunger (my paediatrician says by 2 months). I am in the process of weaning him off his night feed by dropping the duration of it by 2 minutes a night. I started on 12 minutes (his average night feed) and tonight will be 6 minutes. Seems to be going well so far (touch wood). Not sure how you would manage that though if your daughter is not eating during the day. Have you tried expressing and giving her breast milk in a bottle? This way you can be sure of how much she is getting and she may be inclined to drink more because it is much less work for her.
 
Dr. Harvey Karp has a DVD and book called "The Happiest Baby on the Block" that has worked WONDERS for my daughter. I promise I am not affiliated with him. Try you tubing him to get an idea of his methods. It really works!
 
Research shows that babies usually spend the first part of the night in deeper sleep, and the second part in much lighter sleep. So its quite normal for babies to wake up every sleep cycle during the second part of the night, often from 2 or 3 am onwards (note: a babies' sleep cycle is around 45 mins vs. 90 mins for adults). During these lighter phases of sleep there is much more blood-flow to the brain, which some baby sleep experts say is actually positive for development and nerve growth etc. Doesn't feel so positive for mama though at 3am, then 4am, then 5am!

So its up to every mama to decide whether to let this natural situation be, and pass on its own, or whether to implement some form of sleep training. I guess that mostly depends on circumstances and mama's sleep needs, especially if she is working.

I found the lack of sleep in the wee hours a bit distressing in the early weeks, but I didn't feel comfortable with trying any sleep training. So we then happily and cosily popped our little guy in bed with us. He still wakes in the wee hours but only very briefly, he just checks we are there, might have a quick feed, then back to sleep. We all get much more sleep this way! Co-sleeping (when done as per the safety guidelines) also reduces the risk of SIDS, this helped me to relax at night as I wasn't worrying about him. http://nd.edu/~jmckenn1/lab/

Good luck with whatever road you choose, and take comfort in the fact that when you're awake in the wee hours looking up at the moon, so many other mother's are looking up at the same moon too..

:)
 
I don't know about looking at the moon...usually I have my eyes closed!! My son was the perfect sleeper from day 1 (now nearly 3 years old), and apart from the first 3 months he's only ever woken us up during the night maybe 10 times!
However....my daughter is now 11 months old and has only slept the entire night about 10 times! First she had gas/reflux issues. Then her first tooth came at 4 months, and they kept coming! Now she already has 12! Then when we started solids she wasn't taking in much during the day and resorted to eating at night! Just when you think you've got it all sorted, you get a really stormy night like last night (we live next to the sea) and she was awake again!!! I've decided she'll grow out of it when she's ready. I don't enjoy getting up nearly every night, but there's not much more I can do. And they're not babies for a long time. Soon WE'LL be the ones awake at night waiting for them to come home!
 
Hehe yep Mariaindb so true! Or we'll have to actually wake them up in the morning to get ready for school :)
 
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