# wide awake in the middle of the night?



## snoopy5386 (May 6, 2005)

My 5 month old has been doing this for about a month now. She is wide awake in the middle of the night for anywhere from 20 mins to 3 hours (usually about 30 mins), on average about 5 days a week. Needless to say I am exhausted.
She starts the night in her crib, then when she wakes we cosleep in a bed in her room. Sometimes the wide awake period happens at this first waking, sometimes it happens when we are already cosleeping.
We're working on weaning from a swaddle - usually what I do now is put her to sleep with no swaddle and when she wakes in the middle of the night and can't settle her arms down I swaddle her (may or may not be the 1st waking). Sometimes she goes back to sleep, sometimes she stays wide awake. If I swaddle her at the bedtime than she starts freaking out resisting the swaddle in the middle of the night and I have to unswaddle her. The wide awake periods happen whether she is swaddled or not, so I'm not sure that is the correlation.
I don't think she's teething, she is happy when she is awake, not crying.
I don't engage her at all when she wakes up - no lights, no talking, nothing. Her room is pitch black so nothing stimulating to see. Usually she will not nurse back to sleep, I have to get up and bounce her in her bouncy chair to fall back to sleep. Sometimes I can transfer her to the crib or bed, sometimes I have to leave her in the chair to sleep.
My oldest did this too, but it only lasted about a week, this has been a month!

Any advice?


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## KellyandBean (Nov 2, 2009)

Ok i could be wrong about this but i think i know what it is. How many hours is she sleeping at night? I think she is probably down for the night for to long because i had this same problem as well around this age and when i cut her night time sleep down it seemed to really help. She was doing 12 hours at night and now does about 10.5 or 11 instead. Also it could be that she is napping to much/to long in the day time. What i would do is track her sleep on a website like babybix.com and make sure she is awake for at least 9 hours in the day so that she is truly beat by the time bedtime rolls around.

According to most sources at 5 months she should get between 10-12 hours of nighttime sleep and about 4 hours of nap sleep. Also you probably already do this but try to find out if something is exciting her during the night like a nightlight or some sound or something and try to hide it. At 5 months my DD was SO distracted by anything and sometimes at 7 months still is. Like when i bring her into my bed for co-sleeping on rough nights i put up the bed-rail and for some reason she thinks it is fascinating so even though it is dark in there she will roll over and start scratching her nails on the fabric. Such a weirdo.


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## snoopy5386 (May 6, 2005)

I don't think that's it, she gets on average 11 hours a night ~9 pm - 8 am and then naps for 3-4 hours a day.....

And there are NO lights in her room, none at all.


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## Louisep (May 1, 2009)

I never found rhyme nor reason for our wakings or wakeful periods. I did drive myself nutty trying to figure them out though. In the end, I decided my DS was just hyper sensitive to both teething and developmental milestones. I believe he processed things in his sleep and they would keep both wake him up and keep him awake.

The good news is that touch wood, he's outgrown it.


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## Learning_Mum (Jan 5, 2007)

If she is happy being awake can you just leave her and go back to sleep? If you put her in bed with you will she just lie happily next to you? If she is happy let her be. I know that we feel like we need to rock and cuddle to sleep but really we don't always.

Sorry if I misread your post. Have a 2yo talking at me.


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## myfairbabies (Jun 4, 2006)

No advice, my 15 mo dd does the same thing and it's driving.me.crazy. She'll just be happy as can be, talking, singing, nursing, crawling all over me. If I could sleep through it, I wouldn't care, but I can't. She goes through phases where she does this, so it's not all the time. And it's not every night when she's in a phase. I tried having no stimulation but I was so exhausted because it would last for hours. I've started having dh get up with her and they play for an hour and then she goes back to sleep with me no problem. We just started feeding her a snack immediately before bed (even though dinner was 1-2 hours before) in case she was hungry, and I leave her amber necklace on her wrist in case it's teething. I really hope we figure this out.


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