5 month old sleeping/feeding problems

[JingleBelle27]

My 5 month old for the last month has started hating feeding. He will feed maybe 2-3 ounces every 3 hours during the day. Then wakes every 1-2 hours for 1-2 ounces at night. Just before this started he was guzzling 6 ounces every 3 hours and was ready to move on to 7 ounce feeds. He was waking for one feed of a night.

He’s not losing weight but I’m still concerned. More recently he is vomiting a lot of milk up. At least once a day and quite a large volume of sick.

We moved house and he started teething when this all began, so I put it down to his teeth and maybe needing to settle into new house. But it’s been 6 weeks and no improvement at all. The teething seems to have calmed down, only really bothers him in the evening now and paracetamol seems to resolve the problem.

He’s had bronchiolitis and is mostly over it now. But I am just worried there is something more going on. He has to almost be force fed to get going and he will squirm and kick throughout the whole feed, pushing the bottle away then crying because he wants it back.

I just don’t know what to do. I am exhausted and drained with the battles every few hours.

GP said it was maybe reflux and gave gaviscon to be added to bottles but it’s made no difference at all.

Anyone had anything similar?

Hard as it it when they're upset, if he's not wanting to take the bottle and is taking less but more often, is tough out the crying and only feed him every 4 hours. He's obviously not hungry, and may have got himself into a pattern of waking that is leaving him overtired and upset. If you can hold off feeding until he's actually hungry, he's more likely to sleep well with a full belly and you can hopefully break the cycle.

A similar thing happened with ds1 - he became very grouchy and fussy when feeding and his sleep, which already wasn't great, went to absolute hell at 5 months. It was actually the hardest age for me because it felt like all other babies of the same age were getting better at everything, while he seemed to take a huge step back. I couldn't feed him when we were out at all - he would refuse and then get increasingly upset because he was hungry. The only place he'd feed was lying down in my bed at home. I felt very trapped by it. At about 6.5 months I remember he suddenly slept a 5 hour stretch after waking up every 1-2 hours for ages and that signalled a change for the better! I don't know what caused it but it was certainly a very difficult phase. I hope things improve for you soon.

@wildflowersandweeds I don’t feed him until he’s hungry and have even tried holding him off once he starts showing some signs of hunger by playing and distracting etc to see if he will then do a better feed because he is properly hungry, but it’s the same 2 ounces and then pushes the bottle away and gets upset. I’m at a loss.

@KatnissK oh no! Even just knowing whatever it is will resolve eventually would make me feel better! It’s exhausting and I agree, I am going out less with him because I know he will become hysterical when it comes to feed time and people will judge (as they always do). I’m glad it got better for you. A few weeks doesn’t seem like much but when it’s your day in day out stressful routine it’s a killer. And same about other babies, everyone else seems to be sleeping through!

Thanks for your replies. I will persist on and see if things start to improve. Surely he will be exhausted eventually and give us a full nights sleep 😅 HA.