Gina mums - How to get baby to sleep thru' the nite?

[pena]

Dear Gina Ford mums,

After persevering for the last 10 weeks, Zach is finally settling into CLB routine. Hooray! However I can't seem to eliminate the 3-4am feed. Have tried a number of things GF suggested. E.g. a) increase feed volume during 7am to 11pm, b) give water & half of 7am feed if he wakes in the night.

It may partially be a HABIT to wake at 3am but he does seem quite hungry when I feed him. As for increasing the daytime feeds, have already raised it as much as possible (don't think I can keep increasing volume as he is already chucking up a bit of what I currently give him). Still each night I go to bed, I keep fingers crossed that he sleeps thru...but alas no!

Would really appreciate any suggestions as I am very tired & exhausted esp. as I have returned to work full time. Should I get the Richard Ferber book?

Message withdrawn

Hi Pena,

If he is only 10 weeks old - you shouldn't worry (but I can understand that you want to sleep through the night )
As I have said somewhere else :

1. He may sleep through the night quite suddenly, it's a commom theme to have mums tell of baby not waking up at 4 -as usual - and when they themselves woke up at 7, they started to worry... what has happened to my baby ??? Only to discover that he had slep through the night!
2. Most babies I know who have been on GF routines sleep through at 9 weeks (that's MY experience) but I know who have taken longer and my own daughter was at 6 weeks... so this isn't exact science. How well does he sleep at 7 PM ? What sort of naps does he have during the day ?

Pena, my ds didn't sleep through from 11-7 til he was 12-13weeks on the GF routines, as Pupuce says, its not science! I let ds set his own time scales, he always got there eventually, even if it was later than GF predicted. For instance, he didn't refuse his 10pm top up feed until at least 6-7months, but he was on the light side, and a grazer as far as feeding went in his first year. I'm sure it will happen sooner or later. Not much help for the sleep deprivation, I know, but it will happen. Good luck!

Same with us, dd didn't sleep through until about 12 - 13 weeks. It's definitely too early for Richard Ferber. Your baby is just hungry and is doing brilliantly. A few more weeks and you will no doubt get your uninterupted 8 hours (or at least 7!)

sorry, pena, but i have to agree with everyone else on this, although i totally sympathise especially as you are back to work f/t.

we had a slightly different issue as ds would sleep from 7.00pm to 4.00am and was initially unwakeable at 10.30ish for a feed. this was driving me nuts as i would not be able to get back to sleep after the 4.00am wake up... however, we persevered at 10.30pm and after a week/ten days he started sleeping through, by about 9 weeks.

anyway, to get back to your problem. if he seems hungry at 3am carry on feeding him. if he is eating and sleeping well during the day he will eventually sleep through. like others on this thread, ds has not always followed gf's timings for certain things, but has always got there before too long.

much too early for controlled crying imo!

don't know if you are still breastfeeding - maybe a bottle of formula (or EBM) at 11pm, then daddy can do this feed, or maybe he could do the 3/4am feed? that way you might be able to get a decent chunk of sleep on alternate nights? just a thought.

sorry you are having a tough time at the mo, but don't worry, it will come out ok in the end!

Thanks everyone for sharing yr experience & encouragement. Really appreciate the support esp after my horrendous encounters with competitive mums who boast of babies who sleep thru' nite at 2 weeks! Great for them but obviously it plunged me into despair

FYI - Zach is 10 weeks old. He is already on formula, gaining weight very well (hence my reluctance to bump up his volume some more as gf says that they may end up weaning early if he grows too fast). His daytime sleep is mixed i.e. some good & bad nap days. But on the whole, he sleeps well from 7pm-11pm & then wakes again for bottle at 3-4am. But as a result of this early am feed, he has been cutting out his 7 am bottle.

Yr responses have made me realise that I have lots to be happy about ds e.g. good feeder & growing beautifully. Most important - much as i swear by gf - its a relief to remind oneself that its not an exact science!! I'll let you guys know when we finally sleep thru'! In the meantime, the sleep deprivation is aiding weight loss.

Just a quick word which I am sure you know but worth reminding you... it's his 7AM feed that needs to be his biggest... so please try to cut down (I know you are trying) his middle of the night feeds.

Hello all you Gina Mums, I have just read this thread out of interest as I didnt even know who Gina Ford was until reading Mumsnet threads. I am trying for my second and would love to know the name of the book you are working from as my ds did not sleep through until a horrendous 2 1/2 years old - hard to beleive but true - dont want to go through that again.

Pena - my baby is 11 weeks, has the same feeding and sleeping pattern as yours, is also on formula and bf and still waking at 4.30am. He also started rejecting his 7am feed. Now when he wakes I leave him to cry. 15 mins one night, 20 the next etc.The first 2 nights were continous crying, the 3rd and 4th half hearted and the 5th he settled himslef. On the first 4 nights I gave him 4oz water with 3 spoons formula, then 2.5spoons the next, then 2 spoons etc. Always the same amount of water, as he needed the sucking time. Now, I know it may be early to try crying, but I never left him more than 1/2 hour. If you're concerned, try leaving him to settle if he wakes at his lunchtime nap - it seems less cruel in the daylight, somehow, and may teach him to do the same at night. Or you could just try the formula thing without leaving him to cry at all for a few nights. I too am sure that it is habit, although he also seems hungry then. I think it's so bad now because we know they CAN do it, others are sleeping through,they are gaining weight well etc. mine has gone through to 6 / 6.30am on 4 occasions in the last 2 weeks, then back to square one! All I can say is, that after he settled himself this morning, he gulped down 7oz formula at 7am in about 5 mins flat, rather than just toying with the last couple of oz like he does when he's fed at night. So - fingers crossed for tonight. At the end of the day, they are happy, well fed and cared for and have only been in the big wide world 10 weeks. No wonder they need a little time to settle in! Courage, mon brave!(said in fake french accent...)

Lulu 40 - The contented little baby book and then she wrote a follow up :
From contented baby to confident child.
I hope that her stuff works for you.If you decide to follow her routines, there are several of us who have become "expert" in her stuff but are not on commission sadly .... Anyway I am sure we will offer you support and advice if you choose to go down that route.

Manna- very good thinking. As you say you need to make sure that they are very hungry at 7AM.

It helps to take the competitve baby syndrome with a pinch of salt, as not everyone is singing from the same songsheet. One person's definition of sleeping through the night might be from 7pm to 7am, while another might consider it to be unbroken sleep between midnight and 6am.

Message withdrawn

Thanks Manna & Pupuce. Will keep trying to hold out on the early morning feed. This IS definitely the problem as he has lost all interest in the 7 am feed. Its not easy tho' like u said Manna - we know they CAN hold out till 7 am but on the other hand they're only 10 weeks old!

I think I'm a "closet facilitator" trying hard to be a "regulator". So glad I found this site - the support & camaraderie have been over-flowing.

LOL, Bloss - just goes to show, it's all in the mind!

Pena, I know as a first time mum you are trying to do the best you can, but I have to say that 10 weeks is way to young to be concerned, my second baby sounds similar to yours (although I didn't do the GF routine) and she kind of dropped the 'night' feed at around 16 weeks. I felt this was really early! as my first still fed until she was 13 months old (however she was premature and so was too small to go through much earlier). One thing as you will find out with children, is that she might go through once or twice, then she'll wake up again! At the moment with a baby of nearly 1 year if my baby wakes up ( as she often does) I end up giving her a bottle even in the middle of the night, since it takes me 2 mins to get a bottle and she feeds herself, rather than an hours of 'controlled' crying. I know I need to bite the bullet and do a couple of weeks of controlled crying, but I am too lazy and to tired.

All I can say is unfortuneatly you do get used to the sleep deprivation, even working full time. I feel really lucky if I have unbroken sleep between midnight and 6am. Joy of my life is not having to get out of bed at least once in the night!!

All more experienced mums: The night after I wrote my last message (tues), which was the first night gabriel managed to settle himself, he slept through and had to be woken at 7.15 - hurrah!!

However, the last 2 nights he has been back to waking at 5 again. I don't feed him now, just rock him until he drops off again. Should I continue to leave him to cry like I did with the 4.30 thing or wait a few days and see if he sleeps through again? I feel a bit awkward because we have a friend staying whose room is next to his, so I don't feel like I can leave him that long as he will wake her up. The only reason we took the opportunity to leave him to cry at the end of last week was because she was away. She leaves in 3 weeks - should I wait until then to see what happens and if there's no improvement try the crying again then, or bite the bullet and do it now before he gets into more bad habits? he'll be 12weeks tommorrow and is taking all his feeds for his size (which is BIG). Also - 3 weeks is a long time when you feel like every day it's 2 steps forward then 1 step back - help!

also - he still seems to want to sleep for britain at his afternoon nap. He has 1hr am and 2hrs max lunch time. I have been letting him have up to 1hr pm (just because he seems so tired) and having to wake him then. Should I let him have less? I can't believe 1/2hr then will effect his waking at 5am, but I could be wrong?

manna, please don't leave him to cry, he is so young! not that i don't sympathise, i do, but as you mention has already gone through to 7.15, i feel sure that he is already well on his way to letting you get a decent rest. i remember all to well how you think they will never, never sleep through the night but he will - and probably very, very soon from what you say. he is doing so well for 12 weeks - you must be so proud.
good luck.

hope i didn't sound patronising. i didn't mean to. i remember posting on a similar subject when my baby was only 7 weeks! just wanted to reassure you that he will soon be sleeping.

bossykate - so you mean don't let him cry at all - not even for 5 mins? what should I do, just go straight to him and try and settle him again? I don't want to leave him to cry to distress him at all - it's just what I thought might work and gf suggests leaving them for a bit at this age. And yes, I am really proud of him - he's been an incredibly good baby from day one. Thank you for your encouragement.

sorry, i didn't mean not at all, i meant for an extended period. we used to leave ours for 5 mins approx - it was pretty obvious to us by that stage if he would settle down again or would continue to cry.

i have left my ds to cry for longer than that twice - not because of gf's routines but just because my patience ran out and i needed to get out of the room. on both occasions it was for approx 25mins. all that happened was that he got completely frantic - that's where my opinion that 12 weeks is too young to leave them crying for an extended period comes from. i believe that although some hv's will recommend controlled crying at a younger age, the well known proponents of this method recommend that it should not be done younger than 6m.

we used gf's routines (in a non rigid way) from 2 weeks onwards. he was sleeping 11 - 7 from about 9/10 weeks and from 7 - 7 from about 4 1/2m. what i'm saying is that even though he took a bit longer to get there than she said, he did get there without us having to resort to anything drastic.

for what it's worth, if ds wakes in the night now (he is nearly 7m) he settles himself back down almost immediately, after less than a minute, so don't think just because you are going to him now you will automatically be setting up a "bad" habit for the future.

i remember when ds would keep waking and i thought it would never end! i used to worry about "bad" habits too!

sorry have to stop he has woken up. hope the above helps in some small way.

Hi everyone,
Since my last posting, I have taken your advice and settled ds with water & some cc instead of feeding him. For the last 3 nights - he still woke up at around 4 but after a bit of a whinge (the whinge is starting to happen later & with less force) - he settles back to sleep - then like an alarm clock - he wakes with a real strong cry at 7 sharp!!

Its been hard work but after much hair-pulling - its finally great to get to only 5 bottles a day!! But is it normal that at 12 weeks, he seems to have cut down on his milk intake - I thought that he would be famished at 7 am since I held back the night time feed - but instead its been a struggle to get him to finish his 7am bottle?

Manna - could ds be going thru' another growth spurt - hence the 5 am wakings? Know what u mean about the afternoon nap - what GF doesn't mention is that keeping them awake is as difficult as getting them to sleep. DS also dozes off in pm but have decided to just let him have a longer doze than what GF prescribes so that I can catch up with housework.

Almost tempted to change my name before admiting to this - but I left my DS to cry for over an hour when he was 6 weeks and since then we have NEVER had problems at night (except once when he was in hospital) - he would wake for one feed (4am ish) until he was 5 months and then started going through from 6pm - 6.30/7am - he is now 11 months & goes to bed very happily, just playing in his cot with his toys before falling asleep.

Also, I put him in his own room at 3 weeks.

Good Luck - hope I don't sound like the cruellest mother on mumsnet.

My baby is 16 weeks today and sleeps through the night. She has a bottle at 7:30/8:00 at night and we put her straight in her crib awake. She has now starting sucking her thumb and it seems that when we put her in her crib her thumb goes in her mouth and this comfort sucking sends her to sleep. If she wakes in the night, she finds her thumb again and goes straight back to sleep. This morning she woke at 7 am which suited me fine as I work on Thursdays and this gave me time to feed her before I dropped her round my sister-in-law's. We find it quite sweet that when we put her in her crib at bedtime, she seems to look from side to side as though to say "oh, I know where I am", she settles down and goes to sleep. Sometimes she grizzles (not full blown crying) for 5 minutes or so, but by the time I have got her brother into bed, she is normally fast asleep.

She is my third baby and I have always been quite strict at bedtime. My other two children have always been good sleepers. The one reason I am so strict is that I feel I can cope with anything if I have had a good nights sleep. My ds who has just turned 5 even asks to go to bed if by, say 7:30, we haven't got him in bed. Even if we have friends round with children, if we say it is bed time he is quite happy to get changed into his pyjamas and toodle off to bed.

Lindy - sorry but I am the meanest mum around .... at least according to some
We all do what we feel is necessary and we wouldn't dream of hurting our kids... we have different styles and things work for some and not for others !
Bumblelion... like you my kids settle in their bed without an itch... what a pleasure for all involved !

I have an hungry 7 week old who is just under 12lbs and still waking between 3am and 4.30. When she wakes up she feeds from one breast for between 5 and 20 minutes. She sleeps very well on the routine, in fact too well. We have difficulty keeping her awake for the 10.30pm and 7am feeds. In order not to spoil her 7am feed I have tried to give her water but she refuses to take it. She also refuses to take the water at 4.15pm. I started the GF routines when she was just under 4 weeks, previous to this she took water. Any suggestions.