help - 15 wk BF baby who had been going at least 8 hours through the night suddenly waking up every three....

[BettyFriedan]

Hello, forgive any spelling and grammar problems, brain closed due to lack of sleep. DD had been a very good sleeper from early on and was going through til about 6, until in the last week she has suddenly starting waking every three hours for feeds - last night was a cracker 10,1,4,7...Please don't flame me for having a baby that was a good sleeper - I just don't understand why she has suddenly switched to the kind of schedule she was on when she was a couple of weeks old.
What can I do? She seems hungry in the night and so I feed her but I wonder if am reading the signals wrong. My mum suggested giving her a dummy instead (she's never had one and at around the same time has started refusing the occasional bottle that we've given her of EBM)...Could it be she needs to be moved out of her moses basket? Do growth spurts last a week or more? I am exhausted and don't know what to do....

Betty - this is normal behaviour. Most 15 week old babies will wake twice in the night (the 10 pm and the 7 am feeds are not 'night feeds' )

It can be a puzzle when this is a pattern a baby has not shown before, but babies do change like this, possibly because they are (as you suspect) hungry and need the extra.

Take her into bed and feed her so that you can snooze at the same time. It is a normal growth spurt and it will pass. Try and catch up on sleep during the day. You are doing really well - just hang in there.

Ouch....In some ways I think it's harder when they have been sleeping and then start waking as your body gets out of the groove of sleep deprovation. The growth spurt at this time is a bit of a mammoth one, so she is more then likely going through this. Not sure how long it should last though; I've forgotten already!

They tend to feed more at night due to the way BFing hormones work as well.

It's hard, but it will probably pass once she has ramped your supply up to suit her growing needs. I say probably as they can change their sleeping patterns and don't want to give you false hope!

I know how you feel though; my 7mo old DS2 is a notoriously bad sleeper. It's a real culture shock after my first two slept through from about 9 weeks.

thank you mears! tiktok yes i understand 10 and 7 are not nightfeeds - just feel like that in befuddled brain

Lackadaisycal - i think you are right; I dealt with the sleep deprivation at the beginning, but having a baby that wd sleep 9/10 hours meant i got lulled into sense of wellbeing .

I feel that at 2 weeks no one expects anything of you other than feeding the baby etc; at 15 weeks and back in the sleep-deprivation zone I can't see how I'm going to deal with day to day life!

Should I watch out for how much she sleeps in the day? She's always had four small sleeps of around 45 mins - is that about right...?

DH who blissfully sleeps through it all said 'i suppose it's a bit irritating'

Betty - the 'problem' is that your baby is not doing anything unusual or wrong or problematic ... yes, you'd love to go back to unbroken nights, but you cannot (or should not) try to ignore a 15 week old baby at night (not that I am saying you would!) or work out ways to change this normal behaviour. Better to work round it (like co-sleeping) - that way you support normality and support your need for as undisturbd a night as possible.

Her daytime sleeping is also normal.