Routine/sleeping through the night advice please!

[PossetFeatures]

My DS is 9 weeks old and has been FF exclusively from 2 weeks (couldn't breastfeed ). From about week 2 he has pretty much got the hang of day and night, going down at 10pm and waking only for feeds and going back down to sleep, and since 6 weeks old has been having bath, feed and cuddle and then going down to sleep at 7pm. He is then woken at about 10.30pm (if hasn't woken before) for a nappy change, cuddle and feed, and then goes back to sleep, usually waking between 3 and 4 am for feed, before going back to sleep until 6-7am.

I know this is really, really good for a 9 week old, but was wondering how we can start to stretch him so he goes until 5am in the night, until he's fully sleeping through the night? His current feeding schedule is as follows:

7am - 180mls
11am- 180mls
2.30-3pm- 150-180mls
6.30pm - 150-180mls
10.30-11pm - anything from 100mls - 180mls (hit and miss depending on how tired he is!)

I guess what I want to know is: am I feeding him the right amounts at the right times, and how much should I be feeding him at his night feed in order to get him to eventually sleep through the night? Not sure whether I should give him a full feed when he wakes at 3-4am, or whether I should give him a smaller one i.e. 100mls then?

He naps for 45mins-1hr in the morning, 2 hours over lunch, and about half an hour late afternoon.

What do other people do? Not in any big hurry, but would be nice, as i'm often not sure if his 3am waking is habit now or hunger!

Have posted this in Bottle and Breastfeeding too.

At 9 weeks old he still needs a night feed, and probably will at least until he is weaned.

Really, the best thing I can advise is forget about some mythical goal of sleeping through the night. He'll do it when he's ready. His sleep will regress several times with landmarks, growth spurts, teething, illness, changes to other routine etc so the best thing to do is to forget all aims of sleeping through the night for now and just be grateful on the occasions he does.

Sorry if that sounds a bit brutal but i think parents would handle their sleep deprivation at lot better if they simply accepted that babies wake up at night and trying to achieve sleeping through the night is a false target, certainly before they're about 9 months anyway - that would be the earliest that I would start to try to do anything about it.

fluffyanimal I do think you're probably right, and i'm not in a huge rush to get him to do this, as -touch wood- i'm not that tired most of the time because he does only wake for the one feed now and DP does the 10.30pm/11pm feed. You're right that he will of course need a feed during the night anyway at the moment, guess i'm just trying to stretch it out until 5am, and probably being a little impatient!

It's just that i'm not sure whether or not i'm feeding him too much/too little during the day, so unsure if he is waking because he's hungry or habit? Sometimes he'll wake at 3am and then settle himself back to sleep until about 4am, so not sure if I should give him full feed or a smaller one?

your day time schedule and feeding look perfect to me. It is almost exactly the same as what i did with my DD. She dropped the middle of the night feed about 10 weeks as i recall and would go throgh to about 6 -7am. When she was having a middle of the night feed i was giving her about 3-4 oz (90-120ml) which was enough to satisfy her appetitie and let her get back off to sleep, but not enough to through off her breakfast bottle iykwim.

sleeping through the night really is a developmental thing as well as an appetite thing so dont beat yourself up. Sounds like you are doing brilliantly.

Posset, my ds is 7 weeks old and is doing almost exactly the same as your ds. I have been wondering when he will go longer in the night as ds1 slept through from 5 weeks, I know he was the exception to the rule but can't help comparing them both!
I accept the night wakings, like you, as ds does generally go back to sleep after his feeds.
Ds sometimes has big feeds during the night and at others only has 80ml!

Helloooo. My 6 month old was following basically your routine but breastfed (FF at 10pm from about 5 months). I too was hoping for him to sleep through from 10pm until 6am as my DD was wonder baby who did this at 4 months. Having had a second baby I realise that my DD was EXCEPTIONAL and not the norm!

DS has only just done it for 2 nights on the trot (so not yet established) but until then I felt grateful for only being up once in the night for a speedy 15 min breastfeed and then we would both go straight back to sleep.

As someone else has commented - 9 weeks is very early and if you get your head into the space of having a short interuption in the night is better than 2 hourly feeding that you used to have, it does help you cope! I used to feel that once I was getting blocks of 4-5 hours solid sleep, I felt a bit more normal. My DH wakes up once a night to go for a wee (even before we had children) so I see my 3am feed as being like an extended wee break in the night!

You sound like you have got a good routine going (i.e. strucured naps, you are not up all night, your baby settles easily after the 3am feed) so hold fast and eventually your baby will just decide he can't be arsed to wake up anymore for a feed (or you will hear him grumble and won't be arsed to get out of bed and he will get bored and fall asleep again!)

what you are doing looks about right to me. I seem to remember that DS got into a fairly regular 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm, 2am pattern by a few weeks old and then just one night around 10 weeks ish just didn't wake up for the 2am one and that was "sleeping through". If you are only having to do one real middle of the night get up then I wouldn't worry about it. Perhaps try to make that just a feed, not too much nappy changing, interaction etc, very quick up and down again. He's a bit young yet to be starting to "expect" things so just go with it for now.

Hi your feeding routine looks about the same as my little one when she was 9 weeks. She is now 4mo and we are lucky enough that she sleeps through (last feed at around 10-11pm and I usually wake her around 6-7am for a feed). She has 210ml bottles - 5 a day usually going 4 hours between. I do not know if this has had an effect or if I have just fallen lucky with her but the nursery nurse came to visit me when she was only a few weeks old, at this time I was struggling to settle her at all, she suggested that I get into a routine at night, i.e. feed, nappy change, baby grow on and bed. Keep the lights low and do not interact too much with baby. From about 9 weeks we gave our DD a bed time - this has really helped with having some time to myself too. She now complains if she is not in bed for 8.30pm and goes to sleep no problems, I just wake her for her last feed. I would not worry too much about getting your son sleeping through every baby is different and he will sleep through when he is ready, good luck!

First question is how much does he weigh?

weight in kg x 150ml = ___.

eg 3.44 x 0.150 = __ (sorry, no calculator to hand atm)

This is the guideline of how much he needs to consume in each 24hr block.

If he is consumming that volume between 6am and 11pm, in theory you may be able to begin working towards dropping the night feed.

This is a VERY simplistic guide and I would spend more time with a client
working through daily routines/timing etc before implementing and possible process for sleeping through.

My ds is definitely taking the correct amount during the day but still woke at 3am and took 80ml! Is he just a hungry baby

Hi there,

My DD is 9 weeks old and on almost the same schedule as yours, except that for the past 4 weeks we have been doing two 'teatime' feeds. She has a feed at 5pm, then bath, quiet time and another feed at 6.30pm, then bed at 7. She then sleeps to 10.30 when we do a sleepy feed, then usually through to around 7ish. I think the reason this works as because we have loaded quite a lot of feed in the later part of the day. The amounts we give are different to yours as she is a little baby, but the 5pm and 6.30pm feeds probably add up to about one and a half 'normal' feeds.

Might be worth a try.

D

Needing a feed in the night is a comfort thing as well, so I don't necessarily think you can get them to drop it until they're ready. Dd still wakes in the night at 8 months, she is breastfed though.

9 weeks is teeny, just take it as it comes. It changes at growth spurts etc anyway, and it sounds liie they're doing brilliantly. Can you get him to have a chat with dd?!

My DS is nearly 10 weeks and dropped his night feed about a week and a half ago. We give him five feeds during the day (somewhere between 6.30am ish and 8pm ish) and then a dream feed at about 11pm ish. He has started taking about 180ml (sometimes a bit less) and then only about 60-80ml for his dream feed.

Before he dropped the night feed he was usually taking about 150ml during the day but we noticed he was starting to drain every bottle so we upped it to 180ml and this seems better for him now.

The only thing we struggle with is we used to feed him on demand but he goes from contented baby to starving baby in seconds so sometimes the bottle wouldn't be ready and he woudl get VERY upset. I watched his feeding patterns for a while and noted he usually went approx every 3 and a half hours so now I feed him somewhere around this (usually a bit sooner) and although this is not technically feeding on demand I just feel as though we are preempting his needs so he is contented rather than crying to let us know he is hungry.