anyone followed gf feed times and found lo didnt sleep through night

[kbaby]

im just wondering. i dont follow gf but was reading the book last night and the promise of sleeping all night sounds tempting. i was wondering before i gave it a go, if anyone had stuck to it but found it didnt work.

dd is 19 wks.

Nope - I find that using those times as a 'guide' and sleep times as a 'guide' works.

My ds3 has slept 7-10.30pm, 11pm to 3.30-4am, 4am to 7am since birth. The last few nights he's slept till 5am and last night he did his first 11pm-7am and he's 6 weeks old - HURRAH!

I stress, I do not follow GF rigidly - my feeds are generally give or take half an hour of hers depending on when he last fed and sleep is thereabout what she says but I'm not strict about it.

Give it a go - what can you lose?!

try it and see - will work for some and not for others - if it does for you then great !

yes and no! with DS1 it worked a treat, though we didn't start until about 3 months when he was naturally mostly in those kind of patterns already.

DS2 is a different story and is now 8 months and has never slept from 7 until 7. we do the GF routine and have tried cc once but stopped after 2 weeks and no results. obviously teething could be a factor.

however just because the night sleeping part does not seem to be working with DS2, doesn't mean I would advise against it. I would still recommend trying it, as it is good to have a baby happy and used to feeding and having naps at certain times. I also find it invaluable to have a structure to the day, and I know when I can have my lunch or go out with him to get a paper.

good luck

Have you started solids yet? Are you bfing? I found it didn't work whilst exclusively bfing but used the timings as a guide for meals and sleep patterns. I found it worked very well from 5 months. DS had no pattern to feeding or sleeping but slipped easily into GF's routine.

I only tried gf to help with day time naps - and got caught up in whole routine. Found that both ds's slept through from around 6 months - one with and one without the help of cc. In my experience, sleeping through unlikely when exclusively bf - but only a few solids introduced when ds2 started to sleep through. Good luck

Yes and no also. With ds1 he slept through from last feed at 10:30 from 9 weeks old. However, he also foudn his thumb that day and I am sure this is why. With ds2, he is now 18 weeks old and still wakes once a night for a feed (anywhere from 4-5:30 ish. Both are breastfed, but ds1 was having a bottle of formula at night. I am sure this was a contributory factor. Ds2 is exclusively bf. Gina says in her book that fully bf babies will continue to wake once until solids are started. ANd as we are now waiting until 6 months to start solids, I would sy I will be getting up in the night for a little while longer.

Completely agree re comments about gf and exclusive b/f. DD1 slept through only once solids were introduced at 4 months. DD2 got solids at 6 months (thanks to the new WHO guidelines!!), and didn't start sleeping better until then.

She actually doesn't sleep all the wall through yet, waking between 4 and 5 am for a small drink of water and a cuddle before going back to sleep until 7. However, she's got 3 teeth coming through, and already has 3 so has been teething for what seems like ages.

I would be interested to know how many of Gina's babies were exclusively b/f for more than the first few months, because I don't think some of the feeding routines are as feasible once they get a bit bigger. I notice that her revised book now mentions the fact that b/f babies may take longer to get into a particular routine - this was not mentioned in the first edition I used with DD1, so perhaps she had feedback from readers to this effect.

There are lots of gf threads on here - my advice would be go with the general principles as they give you a pretty sensible overall structure, but don't get hung up on them. In particular, don't worry if baby doesn't do the 'right' thing one day. They will eventually find their own rhythm. As someone who likes structure in my own life, though, I found I was a much more contented mum for following the routines, partly because I felt I had some sort of control over my life again, and partly because both my children have been genuinely happier with regular naps, feeds and playtimes.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do.

It worked for me although I know other mums who didn't follow it and their babies also slept through at around the same age as my dd.

Good luck

Kbaby, sorry to jump into your thread but what would all of u think about BF all the time excpet the night feed at 11pm to be of formula?? I am having my first d in feb and am thinking of doing it this way?

Sana
Might be worth starting your own question thread, but for what it's worth I'd say that at least for the first few weeks or even couple of months, it's better to go with the flow of what your baby wants, bf wise. Then I think even the most routiney advice would admit a bottle of formula, and 11pm feed a good one because it gets you a good night's sleep, baby hopefully sleepy enough to go along with a bottle and you are nice and full for next feed.
Good luck with your beautiful baby.
Look out for lots of advice/experience on when to start with the bottle though - my two ds's hated bottles until we went cold turkey at 4 and 6 months when I went back to work, so you may want to completely ignore my advice about timing of first bottle!

Hi Sana, congratulations!

Breastfeeding counsellors talk about 'establishing' breastfeeding: your body and your baby need to sort out demand and supply. Breastmilk is produced to the specific requirements of each baby. Introducing formula from the off will (it is said) interfere with this process and mean women give up breastfeeding (because your baby wants x no of feeds a day but your body is only producing x-1 because you are giving him a bottle for one feed). Your baby's sucking stimulates milk production for the next feed. So it is very important, for the first few weeks until your body is in line with baby's appetite, to stick to exclusive breastfeeding. Once you've established breastfeeding, then you might want to think about giving your baby a bottle of expressed milk at one feed; this keeps up your supply because you are still producing the feed, just by a different route.
I have to confess, I couldn't stand expressing so I did give my ds a bottle of formula once a day but not at first, from about 10/12 weeks, I think?
You could also call the National Childbirth Trust breastfeeding helpline - Google should bring up the number.

Thanks everyone. I tried her routine when DD was about 3 weeks old. I couldnt really stick to it as some days DD wanted more feeds than others and it kind of threw us off track. Also with the naps DD is a cat napper and has never slept longer than 1hr. Its just that now shes 20 weeks I was hoping she may have been sleeping through the night and reading gf makes me think thats what she should be doing. At the moment she has started waking every 3hrs at night and I have just started solids. At best she normally wakes around 3ish and then 6. I feed at 4pm then 7.30 and I wake her at 10.30 for another feed.