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| Photo taken by sis-in-law |
Whooo, last night was rough. Lately, Bridget has been waking up three times a night instead of the one time it used to be for awhile. Up until last night, I hadn't really noticed since we've had family helping take care of her. Luckily, there are two of us, so it's not as bad as it could've been, but still.
I put her to bed at 7 since she was really fussy as usual. 6:30 is her fussy time of day. It took her about an hour to fall asleep; and even then, it was definitely not a deep sleep. Every couple minutes, she would start wiggling and grunting. But, she wasn't crying, so I left her to have some quiet time and eventually fall asleep for real.
I was just starting to get comfortable in our bed when she started crying at quarter after 9. This is when I started to problem solve. My first theory was that she was too cold since she's in a fuzzy sleeper but only a thin, T-shirt-weight swaddle blanket. She had outgrown her fleece swaddle blanket already, but I got the seemingly brilliant at the time idea of cutting the bottom part so that she'd have a hole for her legs to stick through. My new method did not cure her wigging, though. She kept shaking her head from side to side and lifting her feet up. But again, she was quiet, so I went back to bed after feeding and rocking her.
I think it was about midnight when hubs got up with her. When she woke me up again at 3, she was still in the fleece swaddler with the cut-out bottom. My new theory was that she was too hot now, and the thicker blanket wasn't doing any good anyway, so I switched her back to the thin one.
She didn't eat much food, so I put her back in bed, and she continued to wiggle like she was Houdini trying to escape her blanket. So then, I thought maybe she was over the whole swaddling thing and wanted her arms free. Her little arms went right above her head when I freed them, and she seemed content for a minute. It wasn't long, though, before she started lifting her legs again and grunting.
At 5:00, she was crying again, so Nate got up with her while I slept another half hour until my alarm went off. He said at that time, she didn't even want any food, and she went right back to sleep after he changed her wet diaper.
So I'm at a loss. If she's just adjusting to her new schedule, that's fine, but it's not good for any of us if this becomes routine. Nate mentioned that he heard there was some kind of diaper that was bigger for overnight usage. Has anyone heard of such a thing? If so, where can these be purchased? Any other suggestions of how to get Bridget to sleep more soundly and longer would be welcome, too.
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| Photo taken by sis-in-law |
They do have night time diapers, because I have been looking for some as Aubrey leaks because she is such a heavy wetter at night, however they do not seem to have them in a size 3, which is what Aubrey is in. I assume that Bridget is still in either a size one or newborn diaper, maybe try switching her in to the next size would help.
ReplyDeleteI am going to take a big guess that her fussyness and restless sleep is due to starting Daycare. While of course Aubrey is not in Daycare any change in her schedule throws her off for a rough day. Such as this past weekend when we went to Green Bay for the night. She was in bed by 10, normally 7:30 is her bedtime and then she was up at 3:30 am and did not go back to sleep until 5:30 then was up again at her normal 7 am time. However we returned to her normal schedule on Saturday night and everything was fine. So most likely it will be a rough few days and then she will adjust to her schedule.
Weather or not you are comfortable doing this or not is up to you, but you could try putting her on her tummy to sleep. This is what worked for us when Aubrey went from sleeping through the night to waking up every 20 minutes to an hour at night. I started with doing this only at nap time for a day or two so I could watch her as at first I was completely paranoid that something would happen. Then after talking with my mom, my cousin and a few ladies that I used to work with I did night time sleeping. We put her in a sleep sack at night and lay her down on her tummy.
Scott and I are both tummy sleepers, no wonder she likes sleeping this way as well.
I also did a lot of looking around on SIDS risks before deciding to do this and when it comes down to it she had even a lower risk of SIDS. (No second hand smoke exposure, good birth weight and head control ect.) So I was not completely worried, plus my mom made a good point back in the day when we were babies the doctors told our parents to put us on our tummy's to prevent chocking if we were to puke in our sleep.
If your not comfortable with that maybe try stopping Swaddling and use a sleep sack instead. Maybe try giving her a paci when she is restless as well that may help. Aubrey has never took to one, she was a big thumb sucker, but even now it helps her at times if we just give it to her.
To solve the problem of her wetting the diaper at night, get the next size up because it'll be bigger and hold more.
ReplyDeleteI read that you shouldn't change their diaper at night because it's disruptive to their sleep and they wake up more when you do it. It made sense, you have to turn lights on and they get cold. So we didn't change diapers at night.
ReplyDeleteStephen did great sleeping for about a month. I think it was probably 6ish weeks to 10ish weeks and then he was up several times/night again and that didn't go away until 4ish months. Sorry! They go through phases with sleep and unfortunately regression happens.
Also, kicking their legs or bringing their legs to their stomach can be a sign that they have gas pain. Doing the bicycle with their legs helps with that (sounds like she was doing it on her own). We used a gentle formula for a while which seemed to help. We also used mylicon (or the Target brand) drops which seemed to help sometimes. Not sure if you've tried that.
Those are my tips for now. We also would dim all of the lights and turn down the sound on the tv when we wanted Stephen to start to wind down. That seemed to help a little.
I just read what Amanda said and I would caution you against doing tummy sleeping. The daycare will NOT allow it. So I wouldn't start that only to have her not be able to nap at daycare. Just my thought.
ReplyDeleteWhen Stephen started daycare at 6 months we had to write on his intake form that he was able to roll front to back and back to front otherwise they would have insisted he sleep on his back. Naps are soooo important to Stephen's night time sleep that I would hate to have you start with tummy sleeping only for it to ruin naps and thus ruin nighttime sleep.