4month old feeding night habits

[hartley123]

Hi all

just wondering if anyone has any solutions to helping your wee one sleep through. My little boy is now just over 4months old and has been waking for a 4am feed for the last 4/5 weeks. I breast feed him during the day with his last bf at between 6-7pm topped up with formula. I wake him for a dream feed at 10.15 and he has formula and a little expressed milk. this used to push him through to 6.30-7 but as I said he is now waking up. is this a sign that I need to give him an extra feed/bottle in the day to fill him up or is this something that will generally go when weening begins? advice please! he is my first baby and an absolute darling but i do like to check these things!

My boy has just turned 1 last week. I have noticed over the past few months that if he did not have enough to drink during the day, he wakes up at night wanting nothing but milk. I always offer him water first, but he keeps on moaning until I give him milk. After the milk, he happily turns around and goes back to sleep. Then the next day I will just make sure he gets enough to drink and he will sleep soundly that night. Maybe your boy just got to a stage where he needs a little bit extra milk somewhere during the day.

If that doesn't work, sometimes they teach themselves to wake up at a certain time during the night(forming a habit). My boy was waking up for months every night around 2am just wanting his pacifier. Then I read somewhere that you must put it on a chain, not a ribbon or something(can't remember why) so that when he wakes up at night he can just reach out and put it in his mouth by himself. Worked like a charm. Sleeping through these days.

Hope it works

His waking is probably a sign that he is getting hungry but i'm not sure that more milk during the day would help. You could try pushing the dream feed back an hour to 11.15 which might then let him sleep til 6am. Also try increasing how much he has at the dream feed if possible.
They grow a lot around that age and will just get more hungry. Its a while ago now but i think at one point my DS (who was BF during the day) was having a bottle and a half of formula before bed and still waking at 5am. It may settle once he's weaned but i'm afraid my DS didn't sleep through until 7 months which i think is when he really started to eat enough solids (even though we started weaning at 5.5 months).

There's a growth spurt/sleep regression around this age -and another at about 9 months. It's when they are getting ready to learn new things and they basically don't switch off as the brain is constantly working on new skills. ask moxie.com has some info on it.

thank you all so much for the info, grea advice, i will try suggestions and see what happens!