Help needed for going through the night

[Amberc]

My 17 week old baby has decided to drop 2 feeds at once instead of dropping the night feed and then the dream feed. He absolutely will not take a dream feed and gets very frustrated at having been woken (he will however take one if he wakes himself but this is rare). He also won't take anything any more in the night if he wakes. Now most people would think this was great however instead of us waking once for our nice predictable night feed, we are now up and down all night trying to settle a very restless baby who seems to wake almost every hour wanting to be turned on his side or a dummy (eventually waking at about 5am and not going back to sleep). I know that if he has a drean feed he is much better but there is no way to get it down him. Does anyone have any ideas? He is also miserable as he's tired all day (and so am I).

With my now 2yr old. She wouldn't ever have a dream feed and in the hope that she would sleep well (which she did most of the time) I topped up her feeds mid and late afternoon - in the hope that he will be full for bedtime?
would that help at all in your case?
xx

Thanks umchuck, he's having a fair whack before bed and he's 200ml 3 hourly in the day. Maybe he'll be better when I wean him? We're going to try and wake him again tonight and have given him his pre bed bottle an hour early to see if it helps.

Can you try swaddling him?

does the house get too cold at night??

weaning won't make a bit of difference to his sleep

best thing to do is a split feed before bath and bed (so feed, bath, feed and bed)

if he won't take a dream feed then i would give a full feed when he next wakes up in the night

TBH, my DS was having 1 - 2 night feeds until he was 23/24 weeks

your DS is only little and having night feeds/being restless is par for the course i think

First of all, I would get rid of the dummy. After about 12 wks, they start disturbing sleep. Part of the problem is that he is waking for it.

Also, I agree to do a split feed, before and after bath.

What happens if you pick him up out of the cot and just put the bottle in his mouth at the dreamfeed? If you wiggle the teat on his lips, he should start sucking.

Swaddling is a no no I'm afraid as he is like houdini and can escape from any swaddling in seconds! He's a 16.5 lb bruiser of a child and would need to be in a strait jacket to keep his arms down

I agree about the dummy. TBH I selfishly put it in his mouth to try to calm him when he's crying in the night even though I know he will get angry when it falls out. I have put extra clothes on him tonight in case he's chilly. My main nightmare now is him trying to turn onto his side and failing - he's not learned to roll yet - he can only get half his body to turn bless him! I have propped him on his side with a pillow behind him but he keeps going onto his back again and gets p'd off which sets him off again dummy or no dummy.

I will try the split feed although he did take a dream feed last night - not much but better than nothing. When he wouldn't have it he screamed and arched his back and spat it out so no amount of coaxing would get him to drink it.

Thanks for the good advice - trying everything tonight minus the swaddling!

It seems that all of the other mums on my post natal thread are going through the same thing so it must be a phase they all go through.