Advice please on my 16 week old feeding

[EmmieA]

My 16 week old still wakes every 1.5/2 hrs in the night and I am exhausted. He is EBF, very healthy and very big, tracking 99th percentile and born big at 10lb. I tend to fed him about 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm and then sometimes give me a bottle breastmilk either at 7pm or 10pm but because he falls asleep easily at 10pm i usually feed then so not to waste the milk. He is always in bed at 7pm in his cot and sleeps til between 10-12 but never later and then is up every 1.5/2 all night. I try to not feed him but it is the only way he will go back to sleep.

I'm thinking of moving his cot into his room today so that if I don't think it is hunger and is habit, it will be easier to leave him to cry (obv checking on him every few mins). However, I am now thinking about formula. Maybe he is not getting full enough in the day to sleep long periods, do you think that could be it? Or do you think it is probably habit now and I need to break it? Thank you for any advice.

I should add that he is definately teething too but that could go on for years couldn't it!

How about feeding him more frequently in the day?

I think 16 weeks is far, far too young to do controlled crying/cry in out by the way - those sleep training methods are designed for much older babies.

This is completely normal, I remember DD having a phase like this around 16 weeks during a growth spurt and at 6 months, 9 months, 14 months, 19 months all coinciding with teething. They often wake more in the night when teething, both because they are growing teeth which is energy intensive and also for comfort because the teeth push more at night so he may be in pain. Breast offers the best comfort, but if you have dp/dh around they could try pat and shush or walking with him over there shoulder to see if that will settle him back. Alternatively save the bottles for then so that you can go to bed early on a couple of nights and catch up on some sleep while dp/dh tends to him. If he seems in a lot of pain with the teeth you could try giving paracetamol/ibuprofen suspension before the 10pm feed or when he wakes around midnight to see if that will reduce the waking in the night. It is just a phase and will pass, it is a case of managing your exhaustion by catching naps whereever you can and persuading others to help if possible so that you can retain some level of sanity, sleep deprivation is difficult so go easy on yourself. You can let certain things slide for a couple of days and take a nap when they nap. You are better off well rested than with an emmaculate house, but completely knackered.

Yes, you say he is 'still' waking every one and half to two hours, but 16 weeks is classic growth/ developmental spurt territory, so i would wait at least a couple of weeks before attempting to do anything different, although feeding him more frequently during the day may help and that's something you can begin now. If he was a big baby, he clearly needs more feeds to fill him up and keep him going.

I agree completely - both DD (now 2) and DS (now 18 weeks) did this at 14-16 weeks. In fact DS was feeding every 40 minutes around the clock for a few days. That was quite tiring. (!) But now he's 18 weeks and there's been a step change - he's going for about 2.5 hours/ 3 hours overnight now, so don't try and force the issue - it will get better!

We were in a similar situation recently ourselves with our 18wo and had a lot of luck with my husband trying to resettle him after wakings rather than automatically feeding him back to sleep, especially if it had only been an hour or two since the last feed. I made sure I fed DS more during the day to compensate. In the last 3 weeks, we've gradually improved from a 1-2 hour longest stretch to 5-6 hour longest stretch on four of the days in the last week and 3-4 hours on the other days. Bit hard on DH as he works but has been worth it.

We do give a late evening bottle of formula, but think it's probably the bottle rather than being formula that helps there - I'm sure EBM would have the same effect - I just found expressing too exhausting.

Oh, and just to say, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the 4 month sleep regression in our case as had been going on for two months! There's always some reason why your baby shouldn't be sleeping well... I remember being told it was a growth spurt every time I mentioned his wakings to HVs over that two month period, who also refused to believe that DS wasn't just hungry even though he was waking an hour after a 6oz bottle.