Refuses crib at almost exactly 4am every night

[1sttimemom]

Do I have a strange baby?

She's 2 months old and for the last, I'd say nearly 2 weeks, she's been waking up between 4-5am and refusing her crib. She can be asleep, we'll put her back in and she wakes up after 5 mins at most.

She has no problems sleeping in it at any other time. I was thinking she's treating 5am as her morning wake-up time, but she falls asleep if you hold her... so that's probably not it!?

She's also waking up one other time but both times not taking much milk. So it's not a hunger issue.

So two questions here, and would love your thoughts!

1. 4am and refusing crib - can I do anything about it?

2. Any way to phase out night wakings if she's not taking much milk anyway?

Thanks!
Annika

 

[oi0io]

Sleeping through the night for a newborn is sleeping 5 hours straight. So maybe it really is time for your baby to wake up. Since your baby is still young, they do need to feed more often too. I think your baby is still too young to try to cut out any bottles. I would at least wait till they are 3-4 months.

My baby's bedtime is at 7:30pm, when he was still a newborn (3 months and younger), I gave him a dreamfeed. Basically pick him up from the crib at around 11pm while he's still sleeping and just stick the bottle in his mouth. He'll start sucking right away and clear his bottle. Then I would gently pat his back to burp him and put him back into his crib and he'll continue to sleep. I find that he'll sleep better if he's full. I found dreamfeeding worked for me. However at exactly 4 months, I had to deal with the 4 month sleep regression. It lasted about a week. Here's more info on it http://cleverfather.com/sleep-regression-babies/. Just before he turned 5 months, he started to sleep from 7:30pm to 7:30am (he does get up around 5ish but we just leave him in the crib and he'll fall back asleep usually in less than 10 mins). He also cut out his dreamfeed himself because he would rather sleep than eat. So it really does get better as they get older. Hang in there.