FF newborn waking every 1.5 hours for feed

[BakedPotatoChangedMyLife]

Hi

DD is 3.5 weeks old. First 2 weeks she woke for a feed every 3-4 hours, last 10 days she's woken every 1.5 hours at night. I make up a 4oz bottle each time but she never finishes it. The lack of sleep is killing me and as DH is back at work I'm doing all the night feeds. In reality by the time she's settled and back to sleep and I fall asleep I usually only get an hour before I'm up again for the next feed. Been lots of tears this week, I'm exhausted.
Surely a growth spurt can't last this long? It's practically a third of her life she's been like this now.
Is there any way I can get her back to the 3 hour gaps? She still feeds every 3 hours in the day it's just the night where the gap is halved.

Thanks for any help

No magic advice but as I'm up feeding too, didn't want to read and run.
Have you tried waiting a few minutes and shushing/patting her back to sleep? It coul be her just coming into a lighter sleep and waking rather than being hungry. It's also possible she has day and night mixed up. Night feeds should be very boring, as little light as you can manage and no chattering or rye contact if you can. Maybe your just such a lovely mummy, she wants to be with you

Yep I always pat or rock the moses basket but she's definitely hungry as she's doing the whole chewing her hand thing. I always feed in the dark just with the landing light on and the door slightly ajar.

Don't feel like a lovely mummy I've seem 1, 2, 3 and 4am tonight. I'm on my knees.

DS is nearly 6 weeks and we had similar. I can't remember how long it lasted but I remember reading or being told that there are growth spurts at 3 and 4 weeks and for us the two seemed to merge into one with no break. It was brutal - I know your pain.

It does seem to get better. It's such early days but we noticed a clear difference once we started trying to implement a very loose routine (basically the Gina Ford principles of trying to limit daytime sleep time and trying to stuff as many calories in them as poss during the day but nothing else from Gina as I find it terrifyingly dictatorial!) Now we generally wake twice between midnight and 6am.

Thanks for the replies. sleepy when did you start the GF principles? It's probably too early for DD and I honestly don't know how I'd keep her awake in the day at this age. Good to know I'm not alone though. Those first weeks were bliss compared to this.

DS is 10 weeks now and we got through this. My advice would be to try and sleep as much as possible, is there anyway that your DP can take over the feeding in the early evening so you can get some uninterrupted sleep? It should only last a few weeks.

I had the opposite experience with sleep. If DS gets a few good naps in the day he can go from 9pm-4am and then 4am-8am so we don't try and implement a routine yet and just let him nap. He still only takes 4oz regardless though.

He only takes 2oz if he gets wind in the middle of a feed and is uncomfortable and needs winding, and then finishes his feed about half an hour later.

Oh, I also found a soother helped. But that's entirely up to personal preference.

Is she taking 4oz in the day?
Maybe she needs to be up and winded a little longer at night so she can take a bit more of the milk each time.

She's still tiny so won't have much milk. Get dh to do some evening feeds so that you can go to bed and get a few solid hours sleep.

My boy woke every 2hrs until he was around 4/5months. I thought it was normal newborn behaviour? Then he wentto 4hrs but slept through from 7months ish.

Winchester no she takes 2-3oz maximum (I make up 4 because that's the mim the perfect prep machine makes)

Baked that's really tough, is she your first?

Ok I probably shouldn't say this so feel free to completely ignore me, but I made the nights bottles up and kept them in the fridge.

This is the WHO guidelines on making up formula and there's a section at the bottom about pre preparing bottles. Personally I would make enough 2oz bottles for the night.

http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/micro/PIFBottlee_en.pdf

She's very little so it's quite normal. My ds2 was feeding little amounts constantly through the day and night.

It will settle down eventually and she will start spacing out her feeds a bit more.

If you can I would get as much sleep in the day as possible to get through.

Sorry OP but it's pretty standard I'm afraid. The baby I FF fed 2 hourly day and night until 5 months, the BF one was doing 4 hour stretches by 4 weeks.
.At 5.5 months she still woke 3 times ish, but would have a dummy and go back off so I didn't have to get up for it.

Now she's 7 months, hasn't drank any milk at all for 6 weeks (😢) and sleeps well!

Bloody kids, so unpredictable!

Unless your DH is a brain surgeon or truck driver I think he needs to do a night once every, say, 3 mights to give you a break. Sorry DH :)

DH sent me to bed as soon as he got home so I've had a decent few hours catch up. Would still prefer it if we could go to bed at the same time!

Bumping this as I'm still in sleep deprivation hell and desperate for help

Still waking every 1.5 hours at night , last 2 I've been awake from 2am onwards with no daytime naps
I don't know how I can go on having 2 hours sleep per night

Sounds grim. Do you have any family close by who could come for a few hours during the day and give you a break?

You poor thing. DH really needs to help or you will get ill. You can do shifts, its not nice but it's necessary. He could do 2 till 7 whilw you get a good solid 5 hrs.

Working or not, your DH needs to do some of the feeds each night. You also have a job - caring for baby - and cannot do that on no sleep. There's no reason at all why one of you merits full nights of sleep and the other should just go without. Work out a schedule which gives both of you a decent stint of sleep.

If baby is still going 3 hrs plus without feeding during the day, I'd wake and offer milk at shorter intervals. I wouldn't let her have a 4 hr sleep stint during the day at all. According to my midwive, that's normally the maximum time a little baby can sleep for and they will only do it once in a 24 hour period, so it should be at night.

I think you need to jiggle around with her routine so she gets day and night worked out, but that will take a bit of time to establish. Waking and feeding more often in the day and comforting rather than immediately feeding at night, but incrementally at night.

I had a similar thing with my DS. I just wrote off nights for a while, so when comforting I basically didn't expect it to get him back to sleep at first. So, if waking after 1.5 hrs I'd not feed until 2 hrs had passed, then when he started waking after 2 hrs, I'd go for 2.5 hrs then 3. I'd hold/rock etc until it got to the appointed time. I fed lots during the day to make sure he got plenty.

It's a bit different because my son was bf and was using it as a crutch to sleep, but sucking a bottle can also be a crutch. He was also a little older as this mainly happened during the 4 month sleep regression, so I'd check with hv about your tactics! It does sound very much like your baby needs her day/night radar resetting.

Thanks for your replies. My mum is close by and comes over 1 day a week to help, unfortunately I'm now in the situation where I can't sleep even when given the opportunity! Having to take drowsy antihistamines to send me off.
I've been going to bed for a few hours in the early evening once DH is home but I'm open to ideas on how to crack this habit of DD's.

In the day she goes a maximum of 3 hours between feeds but it's more like 2 in reality.