Should I be feeding at every night wake?

[islandbaby]

Hi all
My DS is 15 weeks. He sleeps in his own room, and wakes every three hours throughout the night, pretty much on the dot. He feeds well during the day, taking 6-7oz of expressed milk or formula every three hours. I've been feeding him 4oz or so every time he wakes up at night, and settling him back down quite easily.

I'd really like to get him to skip at least one feed at night, or extend the sleeping periods at night to 4 (or more!) hours, so that I can get more rest.

Is he waking up because he NEEDS food, or am I just feeding him and it's a habit. I can't see why he needs so much food when he's just sleeping.

Would it be a bad idea to not feed him at a wake up, and just try to settle him, or is he waking up because he needs me to feed him...

Ideas? thanks

I would say feed him. You're giving him 2/3 the amount of a daytime feed each time so a fair proportion of his daily milk intake is being got through the night so he probably is hungry. Although he is 'just' sleeping, his body is still growing at the fastest rate that it will ever do in his life, let alone learning all the new skills that he's gaining every day. That all takes an awful lot of energy to do!

HTH :)

Its more than likely hunger that is waking him.
As he gets bigger and his stomach can handle more milk in the day he will sleep longer at night as he will naturally not wake until he is hungry again.
Both my DCs did this. Woke every 2 hours, then 3 hours then one long stretch of 5 or 6 hours, all by themselves when they were rready.

There's no harm in trying to settle him without a feed and seeing what happens... if he really is hungry he will let you know about it!

I did this with my DD one night - just decided I wouldn't automatically feed her straight away - and she started sleeping right through with no feeds (although we've been back to one feed at about 4 am for the last few weeks, she is now 16 wks)