Struggling with nightfeeds - regression :(

[nomoreheels]

Hi everyone. My DD is 5 wks 3 days old. I BF during the day (from around 6- AM until late evening) and mainly bottle feed at night with Aptamil First.

We were lucky in that DD had no trouble accepting bottles and is happy to be fed with either.

The issue is that she was taking 3-4 oz Aptamil at each night feed, and this meant 3-4 hours between each feed, and precious sleep for me. I worked out that we get roughly 1 hour of sleep for each oz she drinks.

Unfortunately she's been a bit congested and fractious this week and this seems to have thrown nights out of kilter. I've had her checked by a GP and it's just a minor cold - she's on saline spray which does help a bit. But she's dropped from 3-4 hours to just 1.5 - 2 hours between feeds at night, and is also refusing to drink much at each feed. So she'll wake hungry, and then only take an ounce or so and fall asleep. No amount of gentle nudging or changing her position wakes her up again. I'll put her back in the moses basket, and then a few minutes later she'll fuss and make hungry noises - but will only take a few sucks on the bottle before sleeping deeply again. It's so exhausting. :(

During the day, she will happily BF for 30-45 mins or will take 3/4 oz bottle in the late evening, and will still have naps for 1-2 hours. (She is not a deep sleeper though and certainly never sleeps for longer stretches in the day.)

She is my first so I'm still figuring all of this out. Is it just the cold making her appetite and sleep patterns a bit out of whack? HV had nothing helpful to suggest.

[MoonFaceMamaaaaargh]

I would suggest cosleeping so you can bf lying down and still get some rest rather than being up and down with bottles. But that's just me!

It could be the cold but tbh their patterns change so quickly at this age it could just be a natural shift. Imo it's easiest just to go with it till they settle into a new pattern.