Hellobee Boards Topic: Sleep Help for 14 wk old!

Hellobee Boards Topic: Sleep Help for 14 wk old! https://boards.hellobee.com/ Pregnancy, Baby and Parenting blog, by Hellobee en Mon, 06 Apr 2026 01:10:03 +0000 Kate on "Sleep Help for 14 wk old!" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/sleep-help-for-14-wk-old#post-2768977 Mon, 21 Aug 2017 12:55:21 +0000 Kate 2768977@https://boards.hellobee.com/ @kiddosc: Thank you! I'm going to cut down on his wake time during the day because I agree that 2 hours is probably pushing it. Kate on "Sleep Help for 14 wk old!" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/sleep-help-for-14-wk-old#post-2768975 Mon, 21 Aug 2017 12:52:40 +0000 Kate 2768975@https://boards.hellobee.com/ @gingerbebe: Thank you! I took your advice and ditched the Merlin suit and the swaddle. He seems to be doing better on his stomach, although we were away for the weekend so it's hard to tell if there's truly a trend developing. I am also making sure he's awake by 7:30 to try to encourage good naps, although those have still eluded us! He's been doing the classic 45 minute nap whether he's in his swing or crib--frustrating because he WAS napping 1-3 hrs in his crib every time before I started changing things... I'm also going to start incorporating a dream feed now that things are back to normal in the hopes that he'll give me a long stretch that corresponds with my sleep. Thanks again for your advice--it really has helped! :) kiddosc on "Sleep Help for 14 wk old!" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/sleep-help-for-14-wk-old#post-2768264 Thu, 17 Aug 2017 08:31:38 +0000 kiddosc 2768264@https://boards.hellobee.com/ Probably not what you want to hear, but I think that his night-time sleep is perfectly normal for a breastfed 14 week old. You're getting a 4-5 hour stretch followed by 2-3 hour stretches. Most breastfed babies won't sleep through the night until much much later. As for naps, I think you should aim to lay him down a bit sooner. 2 hours of awake time might still be a bit much for him at this age. I'd aim closer to 90 minutes. Pick a sleep routine, and do it every time you lay him down for naps or night time sleep. Something really simple like sleepsack on, rock and sing two songs, kiss and lay down. That worked really well for my kids, as soon as I zipped up the sleepsack they would start yawning since it was such a strong sleep association. AnnabelleG on "Sleep Help for 14 wk old!" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/sleep-help-for-14-wk-old#post-2768218 Wed, 16 Aug 2017 22:56:57 +0000 AnnabelleG 2768218@https://boards.hellobee.com/ I feel you! Sleep is really, really hard. And it does get better. The best advice I got (and I got a lot- there's no magic bullet sadly, just a TON of advice and books/tricks to buy), was to give my baby opportunities to self-soothe. That felt really different to me than forcing him to fall asleep on his own with CIO. Just a few minutes to see if he'd work it out himself. I also think my expectations that my baby was supposed to sleep through the night by a certain age (we all have friends whose kids did it young) or that once my baby sleeps well he'll always sleep well has caused me a lot of suffering. All that said, I was really desperate with sleep with my first baby (around 5 or 6 months) so we spent money we didn't have on a sleep consultant. Paying for someone to tell me what to do just meant I didn't give up after 2 days of something not working. Good luck! You're not a lot and I promise it gets better! gingerbebe on "Sleep Help for 14 wk old!" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/sleep-help-for-14-wk-old#post-2768121 Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:21:55 +0000 gingerbebe 2768121@https://boards.hellobee.com/ Sorry you're dealing with this. Here are my personal thoughts: Drop the Merlin suit or swaddle. Both my boys were belly sleepers as soon they could roll and were much happier sleeping that way. I used the Halo sleep sacks if I felt like they needed an extra layer, but both had dropped arm swaddles by 3 months. I think you have a morning waketime issue. 630-7am is a perfectly fine waketime for a baby (at my house we shoot for 7-730am). If he was waking up at 530-6am, I would try a small snack feeding or paci, then let him take a quick snooze until 730am, but if he's getting up at 630-7am for breakfast, I'd just feed him and start the day. Babies at that age really quite sleepy and ready for their first morning nap so you can probably just get him, change his diaper, feed him, give him a little bit of tummy time, and get him back to bed around 8am. My boys generally slept the longest and best for that first nap, so hopefully that will get you to 10-1030am. If you're on a roughly 3 hour feeding schedule, that would then mean you have feedings at 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, and then 10pm for dreamfeed. If your baby is waking up after 45 minutes, I'd work on extending naps for at least 1 more sleep cycle (babies have 40-45 minute sleep cycles). So I'd be shooting for a minimum 90 minute nap, or even better, a 2+ hour nap. I'd start the nap in the crib and then if/when he wakes, do whatever you needed to get one more sleep cycle in there - whether its holding, shushing, or taking him to the swing. I'd try not to nurse mid-nap so you don't create an association and maybe offer a paci instead, unless he's going through a growth spurt and needs it. He just needs to get into the habit of sleeping longer during that morning nap first, and then you can work on where or how that happens later. The goal then would be to get longish naps from: 8-10am 11am-1pm 2-4pm Then you'd want a catnap during the 5-6pm hour, probably around 30-40 minutes. Bedtime after 7pm feeding. Dreamfeed at 10pm or before you go to bed (which is probably around 10-1030pm). For the dreamfeed, both my kids had to be woken up. Like, this stealth feeding while asleep thing didn't really happen because they would conk out immediately and barely take anything. So we would keep the room dim and quiet, but I would wake them up, undress them, change their diaper, then do the feeding, then wrap them back up again and put them down. We would also tickle their feet and do whatever to keep them awake enough to take a decent feeding. Even so, they usually still passed out cold at some point, no matter what we did, and that's when we accepted the feeding was over. If we didn't go to those lengths, they would wake up shortly thereafter because they were hungry. If your baby still needs 2 feedings overnight, I would try to still schedule that dreamfeed in such a way that the first wakeup would happen at around 130am so you can get some sleep. Then the next feeding would hopefully occur in the 4am hour and you can feed and get to your morning waketime. I did the same thing with overnight feeds that I did for the dreamfeed and worked to make sure my boys got a good full feeding and didn't just use me as a snooze button. During the worst sleep deprived days, I would feed them a pumped bottle in the MOTN because it was faster and we could both stay awake better with bottle feeding. With a good MOTN feeding, chances are better your kid will make it til morning. Another note about dreamfeeds. I generally gave that to DH to handle. You can do pumped milk, but for me, that was usually my one designated formula feeding. Basically, after the baby was in bed at 730pm, I'd take a hot shower, do some chores, and then pump around 930-10pm and go to bed. I'd either leave that milk for DH's dreamfeed or freeze it. This way I'd get a block of sleep right away that I could count on every night. mdf106 on "Sleep Help for 14 wk old!" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/sleep-help-for-14-wk-old#post-2768118 Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:17:05 +0000 mdf106 2768118@https://boards.hellobee.com/ He might be able to self soothe better without the Merlin suit. I would try with just a sleep sack. JLC53 on "Sleep Help for 14 wk old!" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/sleep-help-for-14-wk-old#post-2768106 Wed, 16 Aug 2017 11:31:27 +0000 JLC53 2768106@https://boards.hellobee.com/ I am very sorry you are going through this. It is really tough. At that age, my son would go through phases of sleeping well (getting up only once a night) and getting up multiple times. I would just stay consistent with what you do. Sorry, I don't have any real advise except, and I am sure you probably have already heard this, but this stage will pass and you will be blissfully sleeping though the night again. I remember in the thick of it, I never thought that would happen... mamacat2 on "Sleep Help for 14 wk old!" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/sleep-help-for-14-wk-old#post-2768043 Wed, 16 Aug 2017 05:39:33 +0000 mamacat2 2768043@https://boards.hellobee.com/ I wish I had some better advice for you! I'm going through something similar with sleep for my four month old now. She had been a somewhat decent sleeper (would sleep in a longer stretch of 6-8 hours for the first part of the night) until she was about 12-13 weeks old. She also napped pretty easily in a rock-n-play or a swing, or even sometimes her crib, up until that point. She's now 17 weeks old, and over the last month, her naps and nighttime sleep have really suffered. She fights naps during the day and has taken to waking every two-three hours again through the night. I feel your pain! In this time, we've also ended up unswaddling her and making the transition to her crib, so it's been a lot of change...I was of the mindset at the time, that if she was transitioning with something in her sleep, I'd rather work off of some of the "crutches" she might have been relying on. After a month of rough sleep, I am just starting to see some progress with her self soothing during nighttime sleep in the last two days - she's slept in seven/eight hour stretches the last two nights, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will stick. My older daughter started rolling to sleep on her belly at night around 4 months old. We unswaddled her and had her sleep in a sleep sack from that point so she'd have more freedom to move. It made me nervous at the time since I didn't love the idea of her sleeping on her tummy, but after watching how well she moved from back to belly and vice versa for a while, I trusted it a bit more. And she actually slept so soundly that way. I always put her on her back to sleep when I put her to bed, or if she woke at night, but she would almost instantly roll herself over and settle to sleep. Kate on "Sleep Help for 14 wk old!" https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/sleep-help-for-14-wk-old#post-2768034 Wed, 16 Aug 2017 04:45:55 +0000 Kate 2768034@https://boards.hellobee.com/ Okay, I never post in blogs (ever!!), but I desperately need help! My little guy was an *okay* sleeper for the first 2.5 months; we had gotten him in the bassinet successfully after about 5 weeks of sleeping mostly in my arms. He would do stretches of 4-5 hours, but each first stretch of sleeping was getting progressively longer... until 12 weeks. Then, he would max out between 4-4.5 hours, and wake up again after 2-4 hours, then another 2-3 hours. So he'd sleep 7-12ish, 12ish-2:30, then 2:30-5. He'd nurse in between and fall right back to sleep. I could (and still can) put him back down with no problem after nursing. He would also nap in a swing 3x a day for 1-3 hours at a time. Then, I guess I decided to complicate things by transitioning him to his crib, still swaddled. He seemed to respond pretty well to this, and maybe woke up one extra time, but I would feed him and he'd settle. Then he started rolling over in his swaddle. He slept well, but I didn't love the idea of him being on his belly all night, so I bought the Merlin's Magic Sleep Suit, while at the same time deciding to encourage him to fall asleep on his own as much as possible. I figured that while I was doing this, I may as well bite the bullet and move him out of his swing for his nap, so now his schedule looks like this: 6-7am: wakes to eat, then falls back to sleep 8: up for day (follow EASY method from here) 9:15/9:30: naps in crib 10-10:15: up from nap (45 min); eats 11:30/11:45: nap 12:30/12:45: wakes; eats 2:45: try desperately for a nap, sometimes resorting to the swing 4: wakes; eats 5:30-Wear him in the bjorn to try to get a catnap 7-8: bedtime (feed 15-30 min before; falls asleep with paci) 9: occasional dream feed 12ish: wakes & eats (whether he's had the dream feed or not!) 2-2:30: wakes & eats 4:30-5: wakes & eats I'm at my wits end, and feeling the pressure because I go back to work in 2 weeks! I cannot imagine waking at 5 and having to be a functional human after this kind of awful sleep. I'm considering 1) digging in and continuing to help him learn to self-soothe while cutting back on night feeds (maybe stick with the 2 am and a 5-6am for now), 2) throwing in the towel and napping him in the swing again for some daytime sleep and focusing on the nights for now. Does this sound reasonable? In retrospect I realize it's been a lot of change for the little man in just 2 weeks. Any input will help!! TIA!