Polly’s nocternal habits

Up until about the age of 6 months Polly was a fairly good sleeper; usually only waking once per night for a feed in the early hours, sometimes going right through until about 5am. But for the past month or so, her wake-ups have increased to two, sometimes three times per night – when she wakes she always needs a full feed, she no longer settles with water or a dummy. 

One quick search of the Internet assures me this is pretty common – a developmental phase – but that doesn’t make it any easier. When you know your baby is capable of sleeping long stretches it is frustrating when she doesn’t. 

At the same age that Polly is now, Tabitha was an appalling sleeper too – but the big difference was Tabitha didn’t need milk overnight because she was hungry, she just needed a few sips to get her back to sleep, which is why I was happy to wean her onto water at around 6 months old. Polly, however, usually finishes a full bottle each time. 

Annoyingly though, throughout the daytime Polly never finishes a bottle as she gets too distracted – so she grazes on little amounts every few hours and has just a small amount of solids at mealtimes. Which is why it gets to nighttime and she gets so hungry. It’s a catch-22, and I fear it is now a habit too.

Also, Polly needs her morning nap at about 10.30am at the moment, which is always exactly when we’re at a busy, noisy playgroup. It’s getting harder to get her to nod off – again she gets too distracted – so often her nap is late or cut short. I’m sure things like this don’t help her overnight habits.

Once Polly is taking on more solids, I’ll go about the watering down her milk process in the night, but for now I think we’re just going to have to put up with her increased nighttime feeds and hope it gets better, not worse.

Could it be?

I don’t want to jinx things by saying this, but I think we’ve made progress on Tabitha’s sleeping. Two weeks ago, when her nighttime antics hit their worst point, Tabitha was waking every hour or so and screaming until she got a sip of milk to soothe her back to sleep. I realised then that it wouldn’t be a case of waiting and hoping; that something needed to be done.

I started by very gradually watering down her formula each night over the course of a week, and it has (so far) worked. For the past two nights she’s not had any milk overnight at all, only water.

As well as this, rather than feed her until she falls back to sleep, we now take the bottle out while she’s still awake and leave her to nod off herself. There has been a bit of crying, but we’ve stuck with it and this has been successful too. Over the past three nights we’ve had significantly longer stretches of sleep out of Tabitha; one night she woke around midnight and then didn’t disturb us again until 7.15am, which is amazing.

I think for a while, I naively thought that Tabitha would just switch from waking all the time, to sleeping through, but I realise now it needed to be a gradual transition, and we’re definitely heading in the right direction. Two wake-ups per night for a sip of water, is so much better than where we were before. As well as this, when I put her to bed for the night, there are rarely any tears anymore: she falls asleep on her own in a matter of minutes. Like I say, I don’t want to jinx things but I’m really pleased.

I am starting to tackle her daytime sleep with the same idea in mind: taking things gradually and slowly. Previously, I’ve tried getting her to go ‘cold turkey’ and fall asleep in her cot after always being walked up and down in her pram. Not surprisingly I failed. So, at the moment, I’m still putting her in the pram and standing in front of it, but I’m not walking with her or rocking the pram. Gradually I am going to step further and further away until she gets used to nodding off in a stationary pram without me in sight. Once this has happened, then I think it’ll be much easier to make the transition into her cot. I can’t do this at the moment anyway, because there are builders fixing our roof and they are up and down scaffolding directly outside Tabitha’s window shouting and swearing all day, which is so annoying. So, for another few weeks at least, Tabitha will have to nap in her pram.

A break from the old routine

Without much help from me, Tabitha has established herself into quite a good routine recently, which goes something like this:

Approx 4-5am – wakes for first feed of the day, has nappy changed and goes straight back down to sleep.

Approx 7-8am – wakes for second feed of the day and has nappy changed. I then put her into her daytime clothes and she spends about an hour awake, usually playing on her playmat – which she loves – and then naps for about an hour. I’m getting a lot more used to her tired cues now (rubbing eyes, sucking fist, big yawn) and if I time it right she’ll fall asleep easily. If she gets overtired, she is quite hard to calm down.

Approx 10-11am – third feed of the day, after which we usually go out for a walk, or to the shops. Tabitha will then snooze in her pram.

Approx 2-3pm – fourth feed of the day (she’ll often go a whole 5 hours between these two feeds if we’re out), followed by more play time and another nap.

Approx 5pm – fifth and final feed of the day, followed by bath and in bed by half 6ish.

However, for the past two nights she’s gone back to waking for a feed around midnight/1am, which is a shock to the system when you’re not expecting it. Then, once she’s broken her long sleep, she’s restless and wakes regularly for the rest of the night. Why this is I’m not sure, but if it continues then I may think about introducing a ‘dream feed’ at around 10.30pm or give her a bit more milk just before she goes to sleep, as I was getting used to having a little bit more sleep! We’ve started leaving her in her own room now too, which is going ok so far. She’s still in her Moses basket at the moment, so I can easily drag her through to our room if I need to.

Tabitha has been socialising with a lot of other babies this week; as well as our now-regular mother’s meeting on Tuesday, we walked to Richmond with Lucy and baby Millie on Thursday, met up for lunch in Waterloo with Sarah and baby Casper on Friday, and today we’ve been over to Fulham to catch up with two couples from our antenatal class. It turns out one of the couples, Magda and Scott, live about 10 minutes walk from us at Kew Riverside, so hopefully I’ll see her and baby Mackenzie a bit more often. They were in the hospital at the same time as us; our babies were born 3 hours apart.

It’s too hot again at the moment, I’ll be glad when it goes a bit cooler, although I’m getting quite a nice tan on my arms and face!