Settling instead of feeding at night

[mimsythemoocher]

My DS is 8 weeks old - he is breastfed, supplemented with 'comfort' formula, usually once in the morning and once in the evening. He mostly feeds expressed milk from the bottle as he has a habit of falling asleep on the boob. In general he is a happy and settled baby and I have no concerns. He's gaining weight very well.

I've noticed at night he will have one long stretch of 3-4 hours from about 8pm, and afterwards he will wake more often (every 1-2 hours) until finally 'waking up' ready for the day at about 6.30am.

When he feeds at night (whether boob or bottle - I've experimented with both) he will only feed for a few minutes, if that, before falling back to sleep. By morning my boobs are very full but he doesn't seem any hungrier than usual.

If it was you, would you be trying to settle him back to sleep at night, rather than doing these micro feeds? I'm convinced that sometimes he doesn't even feed, just comfort sucks, if you see what I mean.

I'm wondering if this is a stage on the way to him sleeping through...

PS. We co-sleep. Not sure if that makes a difference!

8 weeks is much, much too young for (most) babies to go through the night without a feed at all - and much, much too young to withhold milk when he wakes....do call any of the bf helplines and talk about this, or ask your HV .

Yes, much too young. You could try changing his nappy to rouse him a bit so he will feed more, then he may sleep a bit longer. The pattern you describe is what my DD was doing until about 3 or 4 months as well, I think it's usual to have a longer period and several shorter ones.

Thanks for your replies. I did think he was a little young to be going without any nighttime feeds, but I'm also aware that every baby is different, and he doesn't seem to be feeding during the night - just having a few sucks and then fussing until I rock him back to sleep. It's the fussing and fidgeting that wakes me up - not hungry cries. I'm a very light sleeper and was wondering if I'd been mistaking his attempts to self-soothe as hunger.

If he really is hungry then I'm perfectly happy to wake up however many times is necessary. I'm not trying to push him to sleep longer so that I can reap the benefits

PS. I feel I should point out that by 'sleeping through' I don't mean 8pm til 6am! I meant from his midnight feed til 5 or 6ish.

PS. Philbee, thanks for the nappy trick. He's usually quite 'awake' at around 3am, so I'll try and get a longer feed in then. Maybe if I got out of bed to feed? We have a chair for this purpose in the corner of the room (which is currently used as a laundry basket...)

I found that I was feeding my LO (10 wks and ff) a few times through the night unnecessarily as I was mistaking her making noises and rousing for her wanting fed.
Turns out she is just a very noisy sleeper! I swaddle her every night as she thrashes about a lot and this has settled her down more. I also don't jump to feed her at every groan now and she's sleeping through from her dream feed at 11pm until anytime between 4 am and 7am some mornings!!! If she wants fed she'll wake up fully and let me know!