5 week old falling asleep during feeds at night. Anyone else?

[BabyB04]

He’s 5 weeks and falls asleep to the point where he cannot be woken up. He usually has 4-5oz but at night he will have 2.5 then wake up 2 hours later. It’s driving me mad. I’m so tired & frustrated I’m thinking of just making him wait for 3-4 hours now as then I know he will take a full feed & sleep properly. Any advice?

If he is gaining weight and happy to sleep for longer, then let him go. Healthy babies are very good at demanding food when they are hungry

I have this. The kellymom website has some advice on keeping them awake. It's worked a bit, but I've only reliably added half an hour's sleep between feeds. (Although I once got 4.5 hours!)

The thing is, at 5 weeks old, they're not necessarily ready to sleep for longer or, more to the point, go longer between feeds. I feel your pain though.

When my DD did this I stopped feeding and changed her nappy. Woke her enough to then continue feeding for the full amount she would normally have given the time since last feed.

This is completely normal. They wake every 2 hours at that age and there is no such thing as a 'full feed' or 'sleeping properly' (well, there is, it's probably waking every 2-3 hours, I suppose). They feed little and often. I could barely put mine down at that age and my dh and I had to do the nights in shifts so one of us could even get a couple broken hours before the next feed. It does not last forever, but they're babies. This is what they do. Do you have a partner around who could do half the night? Mine were bf at that age, but I would hand them off to my dh at 7/8pm and go to sleep, wake for a feed at 10pm, go back to sleep until 12/1am and then we would switch and he would go to sleep until 6am and I would take over for the rest of the night. But if you went to bed at 7pm and slept til 12/1am and your partner did all those wakings and feed, then you could do the rest of them, with a little bit of sleep in between, so you both aren't completely exhausted.