Confused with waking behavior

[velocity]

Pretty desperate and can’t figure out something our 5 w/o is doing. He’s done this since about week 2. He’ll be giving sleepy cues at bedtime. We go through the bathe, feed, cuddle, swaddle part. 3 or 4 nights out of 7, he goes down sleepy but awake, then starts doing gymnastics in his swaddle. No amount of soothing, rocking, etc will bring him back to sleepy. His eyes will be as wide open as he can get them. He doesn’t appear gassy - he just stares and becomes inconsolable if we don’t pick him up. He’s definitely not hungry. He will eventually fall asleep again after 60-90 mins.

Same behavior happens 3-4 nights a week at the middle of the night feeding. He wakes around 3-3:30, we feed, change diaper (we can’t change diaper first because 99% of the time he will poop while eating), then reswaddle and back in bed - then the swaddle gymnastics and staring, and it’s 60-120 mins before he’s asleep again.

Completely out of our minds with it. We never know when he’s going to do it, but the minute he starts we know we’re not going to get any sleep. He’s drinking breast milk during the day, but we do 2 rounds of formula overnight. We’ve had a similar schedule every day for 5 weeks, so he’s getting the same amount of sleep and active time each day.

Anyone else see something like this in their own LO? Any advice is appreciated.

 

[uriahcheated]

@velocity Is he trying to break free from the swaddle? We had to switch to a zip up pouch because she would spend hours trying to break out of the swaddle and she just wanted her arms up by her face or chest

 

[velocity]

@uriahcheated He kicks and will almost roll himself he does it so hard. We used to let him keep his arms up by his face, but the pediatrician suggested by his side so he stopped waking himself with the startle reflex. Could try that again now that he’s losing that reflex. We use the swaddleme kind - so they’re like a sack for the legs and then two flaps that velcro in around his upper half. We have one of the Halo kind but he’s not a fan of that one so we haven’t used it as much. It’s also really difficult to change him in - It’s a lot of movement, which wakes him up and starts the staring thing.

 

[uriahcheated]

@velocity Ergopouch cocoon swaddle is what we used it’s basically a giant sleeping bag with a double zipper so for diaper changes it’s super easy to just zip up from the bottom and it’s not a lot of movement during diaper changes.

The kicking makes me think it may be gas, we struggled a lot with that for several weeks but it eventually got better. It sounds like it could be a gas problem making him kick so much and then he gets overtired from not sleeping due to kicking and then it just becomes an endless loop of fighting sleep till he finally does fall asleep.

 

[gaconvn]

@velocity Sounds a lot like gas. Not a lot that you can do until their digestive system matures. We found that bicycle legs and belly massage helped a little. Some people use gas drops and/or probiotics.