Should I be waking him at night, or will he be fine?

[SchroSawMargeryDaw]

DS2 is 11 days old and was born at 35 weeks so not yet term, last night he slept from 1:30ish am until 7:20ish am. If he was a bit older I would have no questions about letting him sleep this long, just wondering as he is so tiny.

Thanks.

Ask for advice on this from the midwife - she will prob encourage you ensuring your baby wakes up and does not go this long again....as you say, he is prem still and he may be lacking the energy to wake so you need to take the initiative :)

I have realised that the wonderful nights when my little one sleeps longer (5 hrs plus) are coinciding with shorter feeds and slower weight gain.
I've decided that I will wake at night every 4.5 hours until she has regained her birthweight, even though it means less sleep!
The midwives put it to me that if she's not getting enough food, then they get more tired, so sleep more, so feed less and so on. It can become a dangerous spiral so I'm going to do that dreaded thing of waking a sleeping baby in the night!

To be honest i would wake him. Even though its probably the last thing you want to do! Would ward off any weight gain worries. Congrats.

Even if I try and wake him though, he just wont take it. The rest of the time he's waking pretty much between 3-4 hours perfectly, it's just at night it's a problem, he takes massive feeds before the long sleep though.

He is getting enough the rest of the time, more than enough as that's actually been a subject of conversation as he is very hungry the rest of the time.

I will try my hardest to wake him tonight, just in case. Thanks. :)

Is he breast or bottle fed op? I had a small full termer and tbh even 3-4 hours between feeds by day was too long for her at that age, she was inclined to sleep through feeds and ultimately lost too much weight. Stripping her right down helped shock her awake. How are the nappies?

At the moment, mostly breast fed but with some formula top ups when he doesn't take very much, if we want him to feed at night he needs to get a bottle or he will just want to sleep, he also gets EBM.

Nappies are always heavy but stripping down doesn't even work when he is tired, DS1 was exactly the same but he was a little bigger and SCBU (he was in for 2 days for monitoring) fed him on demand which was usually every 5 hours so I just followed what they were doing, if he wasn't early or so little I wouldn't be worrying as it's really only the one feed at night that he leaves longer, my MW will be here tomorrow, I guess I should probably ask!