Sleeping Questions

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I have an 11 week old daughter – she is my first child – and she has significant reflux. She has been prescribed Prevacid and Pepcid (she was on lower doses previously) since this past Saturday – 4 days ago. She is an extremely erratic sleeper and I am wondering if it is something that my husband are doing wrong, the reflux or something else. She is currently sleeping in an Amby bed vs. a crib.

She has slept from 9 pm to 3 am a few times – so we know she can do it…but it has only happened about 4 times. Other than those nights, her sleep behavior can be anything – up 5-6 times a night on some nights.

I am wondering – is this normal for a reflux baby? Will it get better with the new doses of medication? How long will it take?

What can my husband and I expect in terms of how much and when an 11 week old sleeps? What can we do to control or encourage better (or more predictable) sleep patterns? Could it be a different medical issue? Or could the new doses of Prevacid and Pepcid be keeping her awake? Are there any good books on infant sleep out there (not necessarily relfux, but in general?) Are we not stimulating her enough when she is awake?

Any and all guidance you can offer is very appreciated!

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of mom’s here can tell you that they had problems with sleep with thier refluxers….I know Brianna did. In fact, she was never one of these babies that cried during feeds or anything, but put her down to sleep and she was a mess. For me it was just time that healed the sleep. Brianna’s problem was a bit oppisite of yours…I would put her down and minutes later she would be up. sometimes it would take me an hour or so to finally get her down . But it did get better. It can take up to two weeks for PPI’s to fully kick in, so hopefully you will see some changes in the sleep moving forward. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Yes, many reflux babies have trouble with sleeping. My first refluxer was up all night until she outgrew it, but she was not properly medicated. Like Emily said it can take two weeks to see results with the PPI. Hopefully her dose is high enough now and things will start to improve.

What form or Prevacid is she on? If it’s the solutabs, capsules or packets it must be given on an empty stomach and then followed up 30 minutes later with a feeding. This is important but many docs don’t tell you. Also the Pepcid and Prevacid should be spaced four hours apart.

Good luck. I hope your little sweetie is feeling better and sleeping better soon.

ndrose2007-6-5 15:20:52

[Anonymous]

Cooper will be 16 weeks on Friday and we still are up 2-3 times each night. Occasionally he will make it until 4:30am without a peep, but probably has only happened 5 times. Usually I have to rock him back to sleep at least 1x/night around 1am and then we eat at 4:30am… Give the meds a good 2 weeks and try to rest while he is sleeping during the day. I know that is easier said than done. Cooper only slept 3hrs/night until he was 10wks old, so I am finally getting back to normal with 4-5hr stretches at night. Good Luck it does get better.

[hellbennt]

are you swaddling? this can help a lot…

some babies are better sleepers than others…

jonah was a terrible sleeper until we tweaked his meds (doses, timing, combination of meds)

here are some ‘gentle’ sleep books- scroll down if you have to:

http://www.thebabywearer.com/cgi-bin/bookshop.pl?locale=us&a mp;cat=sl

[Anonymous]

What everyone else has posted is so true. It does get better with time and age. Babies need to “learn” how to sleep in some cases. But just some practical advice from my opinion… feel free to take it or leave it .

What has always worked the best for us … both of my refluxers.. was getting on a predictable schedule during the day. At your little one’s age, I would guess that she needs to be fed somewhere between every three to four hours. After each feed, I would try to keep my babies up, play with them for a bit.. well, with refluxers, this is more like entertain them while you try to keep them from puking on you, and then it would be nap time. This cycle continues throughout the day until bedtime somewhere around 7-9 p.m. Then it would be a feeding and then to bed. I also would wake my babies up sometime around 11 or so to feed one last time before I went to bed myself. I stopped doing this when they were around 4 months.

At night, I would just pray they would sleep and if not, then I would wait a few minutes before going in to them. With my son, especially, he would wake and make noise, but soon started to go right back to sleep. He would eventually stretch the time between the night feedings.

As far as encouraging sleep goes… we stuck with a nighttime ritual right from the get go.. bath, book, feed, bed.. seriously, I think I started this his first week of life.. that way they know it’s bedtime, and it helps to settle them for the night.

Napping is a whole other animal entirely, and we still struggle with it ourselves, but, at least for my daughter, it fell into place much more when she outgrew her reflux.. however, again, a ritual and a regular schedule really helped.

The Baby Whisperer is a book you may want to look into. She has some really good advice about scheduling and gentle ways to help your baby sleep.

Best of luck. I know it’s tough, but it really does get better.

[hellbennt]

I always follow baby’s lead in terms of schedule, but I do belive in the Importance of routine: https://www.infantreflux.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2802&a mp;PN=1&TPN=1

[Anonymous]

I think like the other moms have said it is very important that they are on the correct dose of meds. Marci-kids.com has a dosing calculator that can help to know if your baby is on the correct dose. I could be wrong here, but I think the earlier the reflux is taken care of the better they might sleep. It seems like at a point they just get used to waking up all the time. A few things that worked for us where swaddling, white noise, bouncing the amby when Justice woke up, and the best thing was letting him nurse on me all night long. Wish I would have figured that out earlier. We finally started getting sleep once he nursed on me all night. Swings or bouncy seats also help a lot of refluxers. I know too many people think you just need to teach your baby to sleep, but with these refluxers you just have to do what you can to get some sleep. It is hard enough dealing with a refluxer, but doing it tired is really hard. My little guy only slept for 5 hours in a 24 hr period and started having tremours he was so tired so nursing on me was fine as long as he and I were sleeping and the tremours went away. Now he is a year old and sleeps in his own crib from 7pm until 5 am then comes to bed with me until 6. He was a tough case and I never had to let him cry it out. All that to say, yes, it’s normal and it will get better.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if there are a lot of expectations from what people say about babies “sleeping through the night”. It sounds like everyone’s does at first listening, but then you start talking to people and realise that is simply not true. So being an erratic sleeper is probably pretty normal for a bub that age. Although of course the reflux doesn’t help.

I also did the sleep-feed-play routine like Naomi. This really helped get some routine going until Alana got a bit older and then we did sleep-play-feed-play.

Swaddling really helped, and still does on those nights Alana is a bit off (teething etc).

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