Why is my 12 week old waking up every 2 hours?
Babies can suddenly shift sleep patterns at around 12 weeks, waking up every two hours right before parents have to return to work. This leaves parents exhausted and desperate to break the cycle of constant night wakings before their leave ends.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Rocking the baby back to sleep
- 2Offering a pacifier
- 3Feeding the baby to sleep
- 4Taking turns with a spouse
- 5Walking the child back to their room
- 6Sleeping in the child's room
- 7Redirecting the child repeatedly
- 8Allowing a lamp to stay on
- 9Using incentives or small treats for staying in bed
- 10Putting the baby in her bed and walking away until she calms down
- 11Supplementing breast milk with rice cereal or introducing solids
- 12Adjusting daytime naps or waking the baby up earlier
- 13Waiting for developmental leaps or crawling milestones to pass
- 14Wordlessly walking the child back to bed and putting them in bed repeatedly
- 15Tag-teaming with a partner to manage sleep loss and take daytime naps
- 16Pushing bedtime later by at least 30 minutes
- 17Setting the child on the potty to help snap them out of it
- 18Waiting for the episode to pass until the child asks for a hug or goes to the toilet
- 19Breastfeeding
- 20Cutting off breastfeeding completely
- 21Having the father sleep with the baby in a different room to help wean
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“About 2 weeks ago that changed and now she is waking up every 2 hours.”source ↗
“I go back to work in less than 2 weeks and I am desperate to break this cycle.”source ↗
“My 7 year old daughter cannot fall asleep without someone in her room and then inevitably comes to my room at night to want to sleep.”source ↗
“My 3.5 year old has recently moved to a toddler bed. Wakes up at 10:30 screaming, comes into my room at 1 am becuase he also wants to get into my bed, I end up walking him back and sleeping in his room.”source ↗
“I am beyond exhausted and so is my spouse who takes turns.”source ↗
“Since baby turned 6 months, shes stopped sleeping through the night (has done since 6 weeks) so this change is killing me.”source ↗
“I'm getting maximum 3 hours of disrupted sleep a night.”source ↗
“I'm so exhausted I'm delusional and can't see straight or focus. I can't safely carry on like this anymore.”source ↗
“He keeps coming out of his room constantly.”source ↗
“This cycle can go on for hours until we finally give in and just sleep in his bed.”source ↗
“My 5 yo girl recently tends to screams and cries during the middle of the night, around maybe 2 or 4am, she'd completely tune out us parents no matter what we say to try and console her or talk some sense into her.”source ↗
“From last few days she is waking up very frequently during the night, like once every hour. Need to breastfeed her and sometimes rock to put her back to sleep. Sometimes she becomes active and plays for 1-2 hours before going back to sleep.”source ↗
“Not sure what to do and we are worried she isn’t getting enough sleep.”source ↗
“She's refusing feeds both bottle and breast when she wakes up and just screams.”source ↗
“I can't survive any longer on 3 hours of broken sleep. My vision is doubled and blurry at times and I can barely string sentences together”source ↗
“It feels brutal.”source ↗
“My baby is 21 months old. They used to be a good sleeper from 2mo to 6mo until they started teething. They starting waking up very frequency and that never stopped.”source ↗
“They are 21mo now and still wake up almost every hour for "boobie".”source ↗
“I cant figure it why they haven't started sleeping through the night as it is really exhausting me by now.”source ↗