9 weeks old feeding/sleeping

[SarahWillcox]

Hello

My DD is 9 weeks old and breastfed. She has developed into a good sleep so far and is now sleeping longer stretches at night. She now settles well at night and settles quite quickly after night feedings. Just want a few tips from anyone with experience.

Her current sleep pattern is
5.00 bf
5.45 bath
6.15 bf
7.00 bed

She wakes at about 12.45 am and 5am for food. A few weeks ago it was 1am and 4am. The gap is getting bigger. 5 am is a really awkward time for her to awake purely because she then wants feeding again at about 7am and has on a few occasions been sick afterwards. If she wakes as late as 1.30am rather than 12.45am then I have been able to pat her back to sleep until about 6am following a 4.45/5am wake up. But now she is waking more frequently at 12.45 she really needs food by 5am and is definitely hungry. Since she is having a longer stretch of sleep followed by a shorter stretch I was wondering if anyone had any advice about how I can be a bit cleverer about her sleeping/feeding pattern. I tried the dream feed a few times but found that she was not taking enough to get her past about 2am thus she still awoke at 5am. I was also worried that my hungry little munchkin might just think of it as an extra feed.

Part of me thinks just to leave her to adjust a nighttime pattern as she wishes. I dont mind feeding her twice in the night. It has developed over the past weeks and perhaps the 5am feed will move to 6 or 7am when she is ready. But it still doesnt overcome the problem of two morning feeds too close together. I am reluctant to put her in bed later as she has been happy sleeping 7pm-7am (with feeds) for some weeks now.

Does anyone recommend I give an 11pm feed another go with the aim of her sleeping through until about 3am?

I would appreciate any tips people might have if they have faced a similar situaion.

Thanks!

Sarah

I did all sorts of messing with DS1, ie dropping his cluster feeds (on my mums advice ) and doing a dream feed and it made no difference.

This time with DS2 (13 weeks) I am following his lead and he is almost identical to your DC, with the exception that he will sometimes do 7-8 hour stretches from 11pm. Sometimes he will cluster feed all eve till 9pm then go through till 6 which is nice !

So IME, leave it and go with the flow

honestly? i would just follow her lead. as soon as you start tweaking things and think you're in a good routine you'll find she'll have a growth spurt/get a cold/start teething/etc and your routine's out the window again. to me the most important thing is the bedtime routine, which you have sorted. (i have dd 3.7 and ds 6 wks )

Oh and just to add, by the time you think she's settled into a pattern, the 3 and 4 month growth spurts will hit and it will all change

I would follow her lead too. At her age any kind of routine will probably only last for a few weeks tbh (sorry!)

Go with the flow - Whatever she does it won't last anyway! I tried to get DS to follow a sleep routine and never got anywhere...I actually get far more sleep this time around with dd by just followng her lead. Will worry about 'putting her to bed' when she's a few months older (she's currently 13wks)

My 10 wk old's pattern isn't dissimilar and she's also ebf. Feed around 6; bath around 6.45; another feed around 7.15. She then sleeps until between 11pm and midnight when she has another bf and then sleeps for around 6 hours before having another feed and then waking around 7.30 (so that can be between 2.5 hrs and 1.5 hours after her last feed) and having a HUGE feed and then another feed between 9.30 and 10.00. When she feeds during the day tends to depend on what we're up to - it can be two hourly or there can be a 4 hour gap. There will be intermittent vomiting throughout the day. I also considered tweaking this but decided that the thing I was most concerned about was getting a decent block of sleep (and I don't think 5.5 - 6 hours is bad at this stage) so I'm leaving her to do as she wishes.

Thanks for all your responses. its interesting to hear that people have similar schedules. i will not disturb her waking then and see just what happens.

murtette- my dd also has a big feed each morning. its interesting that your larger block of sleep comes second rather than first when she goes down for the night. i too have a varied schedule through the day- although i try to follow Eat, Activity, Sleep it is predictable yet flexible.

just out of interest- how long does your LO nap during the day?

Also- do you offer both breasts at each feed?