8 week old – feeding/sleep cycle too short

[KKKKaty]

I?m trying to get my 8 week old BF DS into a routine ? not neurotically, but just because I feel a bit better with some structure in the day, and think it?s going to make life easier when I can identify a good time slot for going out etc. I?ve based my routine on the Baby Whisperer EASY routine, which is working apart from the fact that we get through the three hour routine in about 2 hours ? he takes 20/30 minutes to feed rather than 45 minutes, is happy and alert for 30/40 minutes and then sleeps for only 45 minutes rather than 1 hour and 45 minutes. I?m also rather tired because he has never gone four hours during the night (which most books, including Baby Whisperer, seem to think that he should be doing at his age and weight (over 10lbs)) and will instead wake every 2 and a half or three hours at most for a feed. He?s an efficient eater and makes it clear he?s had enough to eat when he?s done, so I?m pretty sure the problem is not that he?s not getting enough to eat each time.

How can I encourage him to go for three hours during the day, sleep longer for his naps and, most importantly, go four hours or more during the night? I?m sure he?ll do it when he?s ready, but is there anything I can be doing in the meantime to push him up to this?

He's a new baby, not a clockwork toy.
What you are doing will cause you and him more stress in the end.Just let him be.

I appreciate that he's not a clockwork toy, Moondog, but I would like some sleep one of these weeks so need to do something. I don't want him to conform to a strict timetable, I just want to lengthen the time between feeds and lengthen his naps so I can actually get something done.

He will settle into a more manageable routine in time, and you will tie yourself up in knots if you try and make him change to what you think he should be doing. I know, I did it with ds1 and it made not a jot of difference.

With ds2 I haven't even opened a book and although I'm probably getting no more sleep I feel far less exhausted because I'm accepting the way he is and going with what he wants rather than what a book says.

IMHO parenting books of this type are the route to a lot of stress and feelings of inadequacy. It sounds like you are doing fine. Just try and enjoy your baby - these first few weeks are tough but so brief and so precious.

Hi KKKaty,

you are probably already doing this but I try to fit in an extra feed in the evening -DD actually fell into a 3 hour cycle naturally but in the evening she feeds at 6 then I wake her at 8 for another feed then take her up to bed at 10. I found that if I get her changed and quiet then lie down on the bed with the lights dimmed for her 10 o clock feed she'll feed for longer than her usual 15min and will feed from both sides. When I started that she started sleeping for 4-5 hours at night (then she hit the 6 week growth spurt and went back to waking every 2 hours, hope it doesn't last too long!).

Hope that helps.

Get him a BaBY Einstein video so he can learn to read ASAP the Baby Whisperer book for himself & then he'll know what to do.

Actually, I've had too much wine to drink so ignore me, but you can see what I think of Baby Care Gurus .

Thanks for that IDOB, yes, we are already doing that. The problem is further complicated by him being a bit colicky in the evenings from about 7.30 or 8, so he won't sleep until that has passed, usually about 10. But he does feed in that time, and has another good feed before he goes to sleep.

I could understand if he fed so often at night because he was sleeping a long time and therefore not feeding during the day, but that's not the case.

I suspect this might just be a case of grin and bear it until he gets a little bigger. I'm just getting desperate for a good stretch of sleep now, and will do pretty much anything that might work to help me achieve that. Bar him being unhappy or leaving him to cry or be hungry, of course.

BrokenArm - OK, books and gurus aside, is there anything you suggest that might help him to sleep for longer stretches? We swaddle him and have given him a dummy, both of which helped enormously in getting him to sleep, but it's staying asleep that's the problem.

kkkkaty i feel for you ds2 is 9 weeks and he was up 6 times last night snack feeding, we co-sleep so i don't have to actually get up as such but the broken sleep is killing me. DS2 has just turned two and i s a live wire who has decided to drop his middday nap. So i am exhausted.

I went to bed at 8 last night which may be why ds had a frantic nights feeding. I have been staying up until 10-11 to try and feed him up before i go to bed. But he has been sick on an occation from over eatting....I don't know what to do really.

DS1 was a much better feeder he would feed for longer and slept for four hour stretches quite early on. But didn't sleep through until 8 months when i point blank refused night feeds and encouraged him to feed more in the day. But i obviously wouldn't refuse a 9 week old baby a feed.

Also i just wanted to say that you are doing a fantastic job. Sleep deprivation is a killer.

My baby is 9 wks and waking regularly for night feeds, much more than my other 2 dcs did. So, I think there is v little you can do. My only thought is how about a bottle of ebm rather than a breast feed? Like you I'd love more sleep, guess our babies have other ideas

With tiny babies its just not possible to feed them more during the day so they sleep better at night, whatever the self-styled and childless 'baby gurus' might have you believe.

Breastmilk is digested quickly, their stomachs empty, they need feeding again.

I always just went out when I wanted to, and fed DD when she needed it, wherever we happened to be.

I think these books often give false expectations about what your baby should be doing. He is doing what he needs to do at the moment and to be honest you can spend alot of time and energy getting him invto a routine for it all to go out the window as zooms as he is ill/ teething.

Piece of advice: try to accept that you aren't going to get much sleep. Don't think there is a magic formula to getting more sleep cos there isn't

that said, I have a simple bed time routine with dd3 and keep the lights dim whenever she wakes, I co- sleep the second half of the night dozing and bf. This might not appeal to you though. Also it will get better, don't worry about setting up bad habits or any of that claptrap. Don't stress about routine, just try yo enjoy him.

Sorry 'as soon as' not 'zoom' bloody spellcheck

I'm the same i just go out when ever as ds2 has no pattern to his feeding or sleeping. He normally has an awake time in the evening but his one in the day varies quite a bit.

If you are self conscious about feeding when out shopping.

Mothercare have feeding/changing rooms.
You can feed in changing rooms in shops (i did just pretended to be trying on clothes)

Or find a quiet corner in a cafe.

If it's food shopping you can abandon your shopping at the customer service desk and go and feed in the car which i have done. Or if they have cafe and an area to park your trolley, feed in the cafe.

a pashmina is a fantastic tool for discreet breastfeeding. If you are the scarf wearing type.

Also layering tops over vest tops is great as your tummy and back are covered.

Can't help with the sleeping thing, but if I want to go somewhere it's awkward to feed for a particular time (e.g. dr's appointment) I wake dd (7 weeks) give a top-up before we go if we're between feeds.

We're entirely on demand with no real routine, so this works for us, but would bugger up a set schedule, I guess. Her cycles can be between 2 and 5 hours, but some evenings she's feeding for hours with just short breaks.

Hope you find the sleep situation improves soon.

Thanks everyone for your advice. It's not that I am particularly desparate for him to have a routine, it's just that putting him in a routine was a course of action I decided to try in order to encourage him to sleep longer during the night. If it's not going to do that, then it doesn't seem worth the bother.

I'm not worried about breastfeeding when I'm out and about - couldn't give a toss who sees my boobs, to be honest, although obviously I do try to keep them out of people's faces as far as possible.

I think I'll just continue with the bedtime routine I've started (bath, cuddle etc.) even though I end up having to get him up again when he starts with the colicky crying, on the assumption that one day he'll just carry on sleeping. I'll also try and make sure he doesn't nap for too long (ha ha) during the day so he doesn't end up confusing day and night again. And pray.

Oh, and yes, I am enjoying him. Very much indeed. He's beautiful and marvellous in every way. Even in the middle of the night.

Trouble is that I keep being asked if we have a routine yet, so I think maybe we should have? How long is it "acceptable" to admit that the baby calls the shots?

What if U tried cutting his naps short every other cycle, wake him (if at all possible) after 30 min. sleep & then don't feed him for as long as U dare, carry him around & cuddle but wait until he's keener to feed.
Just a thought.
At 8 wks I wanted them to grow almost more than anything else & they need to feed little & often to maximise that.

KKKKaty - My dd was a bit like this (in fact she didn't sleep much in the day at all unless she actually fell asleep feeding and I didn't move) and fed every 2 hours day and night. But things did improve by themselves from about 12 weeks and she gradually spaced her nighttime wakings out until by about 5 months she was only waking once in the night.

I'm glad you're enjoying him, despite the sleep deprivation. It seems like forever at this age, but dd has just turned 2 1/2 and ds is 1 and I'm already looking back in horror at how quickly that time seems to have gone

Don't cut back naps- he is only 8 weeks FGS! You'll find It much easier to settle him into a sensible routine when he is bigger. Less sleep during the day does not equal more sleep at night.

Keep going with the bedtime routine, feed in the dark and settle him when he wakes during the evening- eventually you will find he sleeps all evening giving you space for yourself.

It's tough, sleep deprivation is the worst.

Hi KKKKaty, just wanted to warn you that when DD doesn't sleep as much as usual during the day she just gets really grouchy and takes ages to settle to sleep. Last week she had one very unsettled day when she didn't nap well (the hv woke her up during her first morning nap to weigh her and she just seemed to be out of sorts for the rest of the day) and she finished up crying all afternoon/evening and was so upset she couldn't latch on to feed or get to sleep. She screamed until she was sick all over me twice. It was very stressful and upsetting until she finally managed to feed a little then passed out exhausted! Cutting daytime naps short might not bother your DS but just wanted to warn you that less sleep in day can make for a nightmare night.

I've also found the other side of IDOBisamummy's experience. We've couple of days where DD has slept more than usual during the day, then gone on to sleep OK through the night.

I agree that the baby books do give a false sense of what to expect. We have a couple of EASY method ones and although they're useful I stopped reading them after having DD for a few weeks as they made me miserable - I actually ended up crying with DD screaming in her crib. Unfortunately you just need to go with the flow and feel like you've achieved something if you just manage to put the washing machine on Yesterday I didn't even manage that (3 month old teething DD!).

Would add that 8 weeks is still very little although it feels like ages. We started at about 8 weeks getting DD in her babygro at 7pm (coincided with her getting sleepy at this time) and started popping her 'to bed'. To start with she still woke every 2.5-3hrs but recently she's been sleeping from 7pm until about 1am.