Sleeping through - advice needed!

[MumtoNoah]

Morning Ladies

Does anyone have any tips on how to encourage their babies to start sleeping though, or at least get a bit closer week by week!

My FF fed son is 7 weeks old and generally sleeps OK during the day, apart from the occasional exception when he fights daytime naps. We do his bedtime routine - bath, PJs, bottle and bed between 6.30pm and 7.30pm and although it takes him a while to get off to sleep he usually does self settle in his moses basket and can sleep for a good 5 - 6 hours. However this means he's awake again around 1am for a feed and then up again around 5am - not the best of times!

I've suggested to my other half that we should wake him up around 11pm for his night feed, then he may sleep through to 6/7am (eventually) which is a much more acceptable morning time. However he thinks it's mean to wake him from such a deep sleep at 11pm. I can see his point, plus a few times he's been that dozy he's only been able to finish a few ounces before nodding off, which makes him awake and hungry again all the sooner in the middle of the night. Ideally he'd stay awake himself during the evening and be naturally ready for his night feed around 11pm, but he always seems to want to sleep in the evening and it's impossible to keep him up especially when we're busy making our tea etc.

Should we persist and wake him up at 11pm to get him used to it? I know he can go down for a 5 or 6 hour stretch as he's done it a few times from 7.30pm to 1.00am, it'd just be ideal if we could shift it to the night time! He's a large baby (9 pounds at birth, 12 pounds at 6 weeks) and on large feeds - 6 or 7oz 6 times a day, so surely he should have the strength to sustain a long sleep? I appreciate he's only 7 weeks and unlikely to be consistent straight away, he may need/want his night feed for a good few months yet. But I'd like to start moving him in the right direction if possible, this lack of sleep is really starting to wear me down - although it's nice to have the evening to ourselves!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated - also please tell me if you think I'm being too optimistic and should just go with it, as I said he's only 7 weeks.

Sorry for rambling!

We give 14 week DS a 'dream feed' at 10.15pm and he sleeps till between 6 and 7am. He rarely wakes completely at this time and always settles again easily. Some are opposed to it but it works for us.

I have a 7 week old DS who is very similar although he is BF rather than FF. He has a tendancy to cluster feed between 4-8pm making a bedtime routine a nightmare to try and introduce, however once settled at 8pm he would then sleep until anywhere between midnight and 2am for his night feed. Through his colicky symptoms in there as well and DH and me were very sleep deprived and despirate for any kind of relief in his evening routine.
A friend of ours suggested that we wake him up between 10-11pm for his 'dreamy feed' and then put him back down, acting like a top up to his full feed at 8pm which should then help him last until 6-7am ish. I was a little unsure to start with, as he looks so peaceful when sleeping and didn't want to disturb him for fear of more nights spent pacing the landing with a screaming baby, but to my surprise it seems to work.
We have only implemented it in the last week, but already he is managing to go from 11pm-6am, sometimes later. I'm not saying he won't occasionally have a night where he wakes up earlier than 6am but it is certainly worth a try.
The lack of sleep was really starting to depress me, especially when my friends baby girl is an angel when it comes to sleeping at night. She started giving her DD a dreamy feed from about 6 weeks, so I'm going to carry on with my DS dreamy feed and hope it continues to be a success, the couple of extra hours sleep it has given us already has made a huge difference to my sanity!
I'm hoping his cluster feeding will sort itself out eventually making a bedtime routine easier to implement.
Good luck :)

I think introducing a 'dream feed', at 10/11pm is definitely the way to start a routine which will eventually lead to him sleeping through. My DS is nearly 11 wks, ff as well, and also quite large. He's on a routine which means a feed at 10.30pm/11 after going to bed at 7pm, he sleeps for a 5/6hr stretch (so your DS is doing brilliantly also sleeping so long!). By having this routine it means the long sleep stretch starts after this dream feed so we can go to bed, and then he'll eat once at about 3.30/4am and then up for the day at 7am. Like you I'd love him to sleep through and I've been gradually trying to stretch that 5 hrs to 6. From books etc I've read, I think that babies over 12lb are supposed to be physically capable of sleeping through as long as they've drunk enough during the day, but I really don't think my DS is ready - he's so hungry at 3/4am. So I've tried to relax about it instead of feeling insanely inadequate and jealous when I hear about someone else's baby going all night, I'm content stretching his feeds another half an hour or so every couple of weeks and we'll get there eventually. I'm also thinking that whatever hard work I may put in now could well be completely undone by the 4 month sleep regression phase.

I'd really recommend having a look at Gina Ford's, or another routine book if you haven't already, I know not everyone is a fan but the outlines of routines and advice can be extremely helpful. It also explains better about the dream feed. (Just take from them what you need though and forget the rest, I felt very depressed when I first read Gina Ford and DS wouldn't follow her routines!)

Good luck.

If he's sleeping for five or six hours at a stretch then technically he is sleeping through - sleeping through at this age means just that - a five or six hour sleep. I think you might need to dial down your expectations a bit - babies often don't sleep all night until they're 9, 10 or even 18 months old. I certainly wouldn't expect it of a seven week old. Babies' rhythms are changing almost weekly at this point and won't settle down for months so don't worry that you're setting up bad habits. Go with what your baby needs - and bear in mind that in every mums' group there are people who will swear blind that their six-week old sleeps for twelve hours. It's usually not true, and (in super-judgey mode) there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that parents who think their babies are sleeping all night have simply trained themselves to sleep through their baby's cries.

He is only 7 weeks old, he needs milk at night, It doesn't matter how big he is. Sure, you can try giving a dream feed around 11 and see if it makes a difference but it might not! Remember he is so, so tiny. He was inside you getting nutrition 24 hours a day direct for 9 months, he has hardly even begun to work out that he is a separate entity at 7 weeks! Things will change all the time. You might start giving a dram feed and haivng him sleeping at night then he will hit a growth spurt and wake for more milk. Then he will teeth and wake for comfort. Then he will grow again. Then he will hit a developmental leap and his brain will completely forget how to sleep for a while.

At the moment it actually sounds as though you have a lovely routine going. One night waking is actually really, really, really good for a baby of this age and you would be the envy of mothers everywhere. Ok so you have an early start but you can cope with that by going to bed early and taking it in turns to get up with the baby.