Advice for four month old DS please.

[LilRedWG]

My lovely DD was straight onto a four hour routine, and was fed expressed breast milk. She thrived on routine and was so easy to predict. That was five years ago.

I now have a wonderful DS who is breast-fed and have tried to get him on some sort of routine but it just doesn't seem to be having it. Whereas, DD would predictably sleep for a certain length of time at a certain time of day and eat every four hours, he is more of a snack and nap kind of man.

Am I okay to just go with the flow or should I be trying to get some sort of routine in place. TBH, I found it quite stressful when I tried it and didn't enjoy DS as I was clock watching. I followed the Baby Whisperer principle with DD and it worked, but it feels wrong with DS. Is this because he is breastfed? I am strangely worried that I am somehow spoiling DS by feeding on demand. :(

Also, DD slept from 7 - 7 with a dreamfeed at 11pm from about seven weeks. DS has gone through on occassion, but generally wakes at about 3 or 4am for a feed. Is there anyway I can get him to drop this or is it a case of just hanging on in there? Again, the book is confusing me - saying that is he feed ever four hours he WILL go through.

I know I should throw the book away and go with my instinct on this one, but I would love him to drop that middle of the night feed, expecially for poor DH, who is becoming knackered.

So, if you have got through my rambling post, please advise or give me a slap.

TIA.

if he is fed every - NOT is he feed ever

Sorry - overtired typing.

Sounds like your dd read the baby manual but your ds hasn't :)
Chuck the book away and go with what your ds needs. Could it be that he's getting hungrier, and so beginning to wean him might be a good idea?

I'm sure if you look at it, you have got a bit of a routine going as your care of him also revolves around your dd's routine (school, dinner time, bath, bed etc).

No slaps as it's confusing when babies are so different.

I think that four months is quite young not to have a nightfeed however he is fed. I think that some babies will feed when it suits whereas others need to be hungry. I have a friend who went on about routine but my dd would only ever feed when she wanted (and she was ff)

I think some babies just don't adapt well to a routine. My DD was a little and often feeder and even when we switched to FF at 6 months she still didn't settle into a routine until she was about 9 months old. Now at 11 months she sleeps from 7pm-5am most nights but even now she occasionally wakes for a night feed.

For the first 4 months I tried everything to get her to follow a routine and space her feeds out. I even kept a record of every single feed and sleep for 4 months trying to find any sort of pattern! In the end I had to accept there wasn't one and I had to just go with the flow and once I accepted this we both were much happier :)

I never managed a gap of bigger than 2.5 hours between daytime feeds when I was BF and even then still had to feed 2-3 times at night.

Go with the flow and be led by him. I say this from experience as my DS (now 7 mo) sounds very similar. If i ever tried to get him into a routine he ended up unhappy, i ended up unhappy and it did nobody any good. I tried dreamfeeds and it made him worse rather than better. As soon as i started trusting that he knows what he needs and when it was a different story - and it's been so much easier and so enjoyable too! We do have a rough routine - such as bed between 7 and 8pm after a bath, and he has 2 or 3 naps per day etc. But it all really depends on how tired he is, how well he's eaten, whether he's going through a developmental milestone etc. and so it changes slightly from day to day. I've just realised this is totally normal for him.

He's still waking once in the night, but it doesn't really bother me. I just think back to the days when he was waking two, three or four times and count myself very lucky that i have a reasonably good sleeper!

Incidentally, DS is also breastfed and i do believe this has an influence on his inconsistency.

DS1 was really easy to get on to a routine - he was breast fed, but v sleepy so had to be woken to feed. DS2 was much more sucky and snacky. He was much harder work to get him sleeping through the night and self-settling at bed time. He was well over a year when I night weaned, because it became obvious that he didn't really need the milk.

4 months does seem very young to try to get him to sleep through though. Maybe go with the flow for now, and reconsider when he's a bit older and you are sure he can take in enough calories in the day time to see him through?

Personally I would go with the flow, I would imagine trying to get a baby into a routine that doesn?t suit it would be incredibly stressful for you both.

I certainly don?t agree that a baby of a certain age ?should? be able to sleep through without a feed, I think some babies at that age may not need one but the majority will still need one. My DS is 9m and still needs a night feed more often than not, as do most of my friends children of the same age, whether bf or ff.

Thanks all - you've given me the boost I needed to just keep going with it.

Jaffacake79 - you are right. He does have a rough routine, due to DD.

I know I'm just overthinking it all, but I just have this little voice in the back of my head telling me that I am spoiling him.

ds1 fed every two hours day and night until 10mos when i turned the tap off. he had certainly founf his own routine, which was markedly different from dd1's (similar to your dd!)

that said, although it nealr ybrole me through lack of sleep, he was very contented. resisted all efforts to space out feeds/ encourage longer sleeps etc etc.

they are all different. you just haven't founf his routine yet.

Thanks both. Madam - that's just what I needed to hear. :-)

Both my Dcs have been very different.

My 2.5yr old DS when he was a baby slept very predictably and was easily in a routine. Although he still doesn't sleep through (but that's another thread!). He was also fed expressed milk from a bottle till 11 months.

My nearly 10 month old DD is breast-fed, and has no routine whatsoever. It's difficult to impose a routine when I have a toddler too. She naps when she can and feeds every 3hrs. In the night she wakes up about twice for feeds. Although I think DS had night feeds too till way past 1yr.