Tips for longer stretches of sleep for ebf baby (longer than 2 hours)

[snowchick1977]

Dd is 5 months old and ebf. She is a great chilled out baby. Never cries and will happily lie or sit, without fussing, all day. She feeds every 3-4 hours during the day, is never sick and has no wind.

I am lucky.

At night though, she still wakes every 2 hours like clockwork. I feed her for 10-20 minutes and she goes straight back to sleep with no fuss.

I am sure that she is not really feeding that much at night and i think she is doing it out of habit and just for comfort. I am not one to let her CIO but i am pretty exhausted. I am due to go back to a full time job in 2 months so would ideally like to get some longer stretches of sleep.

She will not take a dummy. I have tried settling her with a cuddle and tried seeing if she will settle herself but she doesnt but as soon as i feed her she dozes off quickly.

Am i expecting too much and should i just accept that this night schedule is how its going to be and accept it for having a great laid back baby in the day?

Any help or advice would be welcome as most of my friends babies (ff and ebf) are sleeping 6-12 hour stretches now

Thanks

Have you tried offering more during the day to "tank her up"? I can't really remember how mine was at 5 months, but I'm sure I was feeding her more than 3x during the day, I'm fairly sure my strategy up to six or seven months (weaning) was to feed as often as i could during the day in the hope that it would help get the calories in to see her through the night.

Wanted to second what smaths said. I would make sure that you are feeding a little more often in the day (every2.5 - 3hrs). I also always offered a bottle of expressed breast milk after the last feed (10:30pm), so would bf and then offer expressed in a bottle and that would help to get the night off to a good start. Both of mine were ebf and slept 11pm-7am from 8 weeks old!

I feed her on demand in the day. I'll try maybe offering her a feed more often.

Definitely try offering more daytime feeds - DS2 is a good night time sleeper and a natural tanker-upper and complains loudly if not fed every 2 - 3 hours. There's no harm in offering more often even if she doesn't seem mad for it, maybe somewhere nice and quiet so she doesn't get distracted. She could be reverse cycling and more frequent daytime feeds could break the pattern.

I think as babies get older they can often be so interested in exciting daytime activities that they forget to "demand" enough feeds. They then get hungry at night and make up for it!

There's no harm in reminding her a bit during the day. Also taking her somewhere quiet to feed during the day may help her to concentrate and feed for longer.

Both my children were ebf and this did help a bit.

Good luck!

Are you me snowchick?

My dd is very similar although we are a month on and making progress I think. At 5 months I was certainly feeding her that often at night and early mornings every hour :(

Dd is now 6 months and we are getting some 4 hour breaks. Last night in fact I fed her at 8pm, then not till 1.30am and she just woke at six for a feed! Whoop!

What's working??

1. Weaning maybe is starting to take effect.., we started at 6months and two weeks in she is definitely taking in food
2. Dh going to her
3. Out of my bed and into her cot
4. Letting her sleep on her tummy ( she rolls there herself but I've stopped flipping her back)

I feed her and settle her to sleep in her own room and when she wakes usually after an hour my dh goes to her and re settles her. And keeps doing this if needed so she doesn't get fed before 11 ( 3 hour gap) but usually it's midnight but last night later. Last night he had to resettle her about 4/5 times I think between 10-11.30 but she then did 2 hours after that so she wasn't hungry

Can your partner help? It's made such a difference to us. I go to sleep next door and dd goes back to sleep in daddy's arms really quickly now and seems to be getting the message that she doesn't get fed every time she wakes. If she gets upset I can hear and come in and feed if necessary but it really isn't any more.