Introducing structure to night feeds.

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DS2 has never been a good sleeper. He is 19 weeks, ebf and refuses a bottle or dummy. The best he has managed in a night is two night feeds and straight back to sleep afterwards, but this happened over the space of two weeks and not every night. Before and after this miraculous time he wakes for a feed from 3 to 5 times a night! I don't mind a couple of night feeds, but 5? I am having trouble dealing with it on a regular basis.

Last night he went down at 7pm as usual after feeding for 15 minutes and falling asleep, same as always. Then he woke at 9, which is the earliest he's woken, and I fed him close to tears in despair at how unpredictable his sleep/feed patterns are at night. But then he didn't wake again til 4am!!

So my questions are, should I try and put some structure into night feeds by dream feeding at 9ish, or waking him to feed? Or was last night just a fluke and an attempt at structure won't make any difference?

(Have also posted in Sleep).

I'm no an expert but around this age my DD's sleep completely went to pot. I think it's called 4 month sleep regression. She had been sleeping through before. For her it lasted about 2 months, but she has gradually improved and is very consistent now at 8 months old, waking just once a night.

I don't think that anything we did at the time really helped! She was just learning how to sleep. Does it help to know that you're not setting bad sleep habits for life, just dealing with an interim problem?

Is there anything you can do to make it easier for yourself? Could your partner do feeds up to midnight whilst you sleep etc?

Sorry not to offer more practical advice, but my experience was that nothing helped it was just a phase....

Thanks so much. It's a similar reply to someone who has just posted in Sleep. I have heard of the sleep regression thing but was attempting the 'hands over ears la la la' thing and hoping it wasn't true . It certainly does help to think of it in terms with a short-term problem rather than bad habits

I am taking both your and the other posters advice and just going to bed early! (DH can't do feeds as we have a bottle refuser, but that's a whole different discussion!)

Hello Imo there would be know harm in attempting a routine for at night, with my dd like your ds she had a feed at 7pm and went to bed, then I would wake her about 10pm for a feed and then do all that I could to not feed again til 5am.

I found if I got between 5-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep it made a massive difference to how I felt the following day!!

If she woke before 4-5am I would offer water, change nappy, do a fair bit of 'shushing' and gentle patting, make sure she was not too hot or cold and basically do everything bar feeding. If all else failed and I was desperate then I would offer bf.

By 7 months she slept from 7pm to 7am, now I can't hand on heart say that is because of anything I did but it did work for us!!!

My DS1 was like this. We did dream feed him and it worked brilliantly, he was sleeping from 7-7 with a dreamdfeed from 14 weeks! But for some reason I'm reluctant to do it this time. I can't even really explain why. I guess I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want to pin my hopes on something that's a waste of time!

It's so true about having a 5-6 hour stretch of sleep - it seems to make the next day a whole lot easier.

I have tried the gently patting/shushing which is how he goes to sleep for naps, but it just isn't working at night. So as people keep telling me he's too young for bad habits, I'm presuming he's actually hungry?

I never fancied dream feeding either, not sure why. At its worst my DD was up every two hours during this period.

It Will Get Better!

I've reflected before on what we did to get through that time and whether I would do anything differently.

We ended up using a dummy which caused another set of issues at the time. However it's actually helpful having a sleep prop that really works, as long as they can settle without it in the night. In the day or when we're out I can pop them dummy in and she's off!

I have a friend who co-slept and has not had any problems getting her DS into his own cot at 9 months.

I think you do what you have to to get through and then deal with whatever sleep issues you create! Honestly though, I don't think any amount of sleep training/solids/formula/extra feeds/withholding feeds made any difference in our case!

You're definitely right about doing whatever to get through. It's all about getting enough sleep at the moment! We'll get there in the end, I guess.

He won't take a dummy either. Sooooo different to DS1 who loved his dummy as a baby. It has been a real eye opener to realise how different they are - for some reason I was expecting them to be similar, that our second baby would do/like all the same things as our first! How wrong I was