Difficulties with night feeding

[HollyFP]

Last night I really struggled to get my DD (8 weeks) to BF - this was the 3am feed (she went to bed at 11pm ish). Normally when she's hungry at night she starts making grunting noises (never crying) which wakes me up and i just put her on, but last night she did the noises but just would not open her mouth. I tried for about 15 minutes, putting her back down and picking her up to try again, but no luck.

In the end I just put her back down and tried to go back to sleep...but didn't - I was awake for 2 hours (while she carried on grunting and power napping ) until 5.30am when I tried her again. She still wouldn't open her mouth at first but I persevered and finally she opened just enough for me to get nipple in .

She has done this a few times in recent days and it makes me really upset and/or frustrated - I'm convinced she's hungry as the times follow her normal night feeding pattern (10/11pm, 3am then 6/7am), but I don't understand why she doesn't seem interested sometimes.

Could it be that actually she isn't hungry and is just waking out of habit? WOuld that happen at 8 weeks already? She did seem to be a bit windy last night - could that have been interfering?

BTW she feeds normally during the day, is putting on good weight etc so no worries at all from that side.

T.I.A

could be that she has started dropping feed, my first slept through from 9wks and my 2nd from 8wks. 3rd is now 7wks and is doing similar to yours, waking but barely taking any milk.

Thanks girls - this could well be it

did your DCs go back to sleep on their own or did you have to encourage it, rocking etc? Or just ignore it and leave them to it, IYKWIM?! Difficult to know whether to keep trying to get her to feed or not.

dd1 we moved into her own room- only really moving her from moses basket on one side of wall to cot on the other side of it so not as drastic as it sounds..

because of that we could hear if she cried or made 'proper' noise but not snuffling which was what we'd get her up for to try to feed when she was with us.

I think it was a wait for proper crying policy really. I really cannot sleep through that snuffling/wriggling though and it makes me want to feed them..

dd2 only slept through for a couple of weeks then got the most awful excema due to allergies and didn't sleep through again until she was 1 and we did wet wrapping.

dd3 was going to bed at 7pm then waking around 2-3ish for a feed and again at 6-7 but has now gone back to 12-1 ish and 4-5 ish but not wanting a full feed. very tiring..

thanks. We might try moving her into her own room - I originally thought 8 weeks was way too early but I guess if it helps everyone sleep properly then I should give it a try.

Hopefully she doesn't need the 3am feed any more (well, for now at least!) :)

well you generally get flamed for it on here but with dd1 we were a plasterboard away from her so not much difference- better than 'force' feeding a baby who was just having a wriggle!

dd2 had to move at about 3/4 months when she outgrew moses basket as can't fit a cot in our room.

good luck

DS2 was very restless at night around the same age. I remember trying to feed him, but he didn't seem interested.

It did pass and now he's back to feeding relatively frequently (growth spurt I think!). We co-sleep, so it wasn't too bad, but he was noisy so we still had quite disturbed sleep.