When to feed baby at night

[March2020]

My son is a healthy , formula fed three month old and currently wakes between two and five times a night. I'm happy to feed him as often as he needs (or at least as happy as you can be about getting out of bed in the middle of the night ) but I'm sure I'm actually disturbing him when he could settle back to sleep. At what point do you pick up and feed your baby? First stirring? When eyes open? When they cry? When you're sick of listening to the thrashing about?

I would say when he cries and doesn't sound like he's going to settle down. He will continue to wake for the attention if you pick him up/feed straight away.

I think if he doesn’t have any weight issues, then shouldn’t need feeding 5 times at night. Do you keep track of how much he takes each time? I bottle feed expressed milk and log everything on an app so can get a better idea of how much mine is taking (as there is no way I would remember times and amounts esp at in the middle of the night). What we do is after DS stirs, we leave him a bit to see if he self settles, if not then we pat a little, then comes the white noise (we put him to sleep with white noise but turns itself off after a couples of hours). If he becomes more awake and unsettled then We will pick him up.

Sorry finger slipped and posted too early...

Since DS is usually fed around 3-4 hours during the day, we know if he wakes at night only after an hour or two then he probably isn’t hungry. I think he as an automatic body clock though as he wakes up at 6am like clockwork no matter if he was fed at 2am or 5am! If it’s the latter then we are usually able to pat him back to sleep. So maybe try some of the techniques where you don’t need to pick him up as this may wake him up more if he isn’t fully awake

We've just got to this phase. Before now everytime my son has woken at night hes needed feeding. Now its not the case. We're just getting used to noticing when he actually needs feeding vs when hes just needs settling again.

I go off time between feeds. The other night my son woke at 1am for a feed and took 200ml. He then woke again at 3am, 4am and 5am. His usual wake time for another feed is 5am, although we tried to feed again at 3am. In hindsight he just needed settling again because of the time from the last feed.

Its tricky to know though isnt it? When before now its feed everytime.

At that age I would wait for some form of winge or cry - not hungry screaming obviously. I definitely wouldn’t pick up just because he stirred a bit. 5 feeds does seem a bit excessive. 2 or 3 would be ‘the norm’ I think.

Forgot to ask, how much does he take on average at each feed? At 3 months I think DS had around 5.5 Oz every 3.5/4hours. Sometimes he would have a little less, but if it was significantly less then I would give him a break, a nappy change if he needed it and then try again 10 minutes later as I knew he would need it before long. If he is fed enough during the day then he won’t need as much during the night

I agree that five feeds is a bit over the top, he had dropped to two or three most nights but seems to be ramping back up again.

He seems to eat less as the night goes on. First feed is usually 5-6oz, second 3-4oz and if he's up again they can be between 2-4oz. If I do manage to settle him it never seems to last more than 20 minutes before he's awake again, moving his head side to side and sucking his hand as though he's hungry. Perhaps I just need to up my tolerance to being kept awake by a wriggling, grunting Thrasher!

@March2020 what are you counting as ‘night’ out of interest? From 7pm or later?

The hand sucking thing may not necessarily be for hunger. My DS constantly has his hand in his mouth, and has done for a while. I thought he may have been teething as he was super drooley, and always sucking on his fingers/hand/anything he can get close to his mouth, but a month on we are yet to see any teeth.

@newmum234 I've never thought about why, but I think of night as from when he goes down. So last night he was asleep in his cot from 8pm, but other nights it's usually between 8-9pm.

Good point @CCW86 about the hand, he has also started mouthing his hands a lot in general.