waking at 3.45 and 6am and i'm exhausted

[issywoo]

my 10 week old is on a 3 hourly routine (we've tried 4 hourly aswell)from 7am til 7pm when he goes off to sleep until we wake him at 11.30 for a feed. during the day he takes approx 4-6 oz of either ebf or formula at each feed. when we wake him at 11.30 sometimes he will only take 2 oz but sometimes 4oz. he then wakes at 3.45 and i try to settle him without feeding (if he does eat he can have between 3 and 5 oz)but still wakes at 6am for a small feed - shouldn't this be his biggest feed of the day? actually the biggest one seems to be at 1pm. he's a big boy consistently on the 75th centile but he doesn't seem to eat that much
what am i doing wrong? my ds slept 7-7 at 13 weeks - am i paying for it now?!

i doubt youre doing anything wrong... the main thing i've learnt from mumsnet is that all babies are different... my dd was feeding 3 hourly at 10 weeks...was feeding 3 hourly till about 15 weeks i think... and then it spaced out to 4.5 hourly! (dd on 91st percentile) and shes only just started sleeping 10 hours without a feed... we've only just started to stop her feeding during the night, and sometimes i still dream feed her at 11.30 to top her up... she's nearly 7 months.

Issywoo, sounds to me as though you're doing brilliantly!!! He's still only a wee (as in young) chap but my advice would be to try and get as much into him during the day and feed more often towards the end of the day. I've always dream fed at 10.30pm and in the beginning my littlin also woke at 3.30 for a feed which gradually got pushed to 4, then 5 then 7am. I don't think it's such a problem that he's having a nice big feed at 3.45. At least he's going back to sleep and starting the day at a reasonable time. Like you said, he's a big strapping fella which must mean he's thriving on what you've been doing so far. I have a feeling that the 3.45 wake ups will be a distant memory very soon. Good luck.

Issywoo, my ds2 is the same age 10 weeks and he was doing the same as your ds. He was so tired when we woke him at 10.30-11.00 that he only took a few onces then he would wake ravishing his milk on the next feed 4 hours later. What I try to do with mine is give him a bigger feed at 6 or 6.30p.m (6oz) and then fully wake him up before he has 10.30-11.00 feed so that he isn't dreamfeeding, he will now take the full feed (for my ds that is 5oz) yours maybe different. Occassionally he may stir or move at 3.00p.m. but I settle him and then he will definately wake at 4, but I try and dreamfeed him before he is fully awake, this works for him and me because he is so tired he can only take 2oz. Then at 7.00a.m., I will give him his big feed of 6ozs. I have been trying this for about 2 weeks and it works for him occasionaaly he will sleep right through till 7 but not all the time as he is still tiny. My god ds1 didn't sleep through till he was 6 months and he still woke for water every few hours!!!!NIGHTMARE I hope this helps you if not sorry and I hope someone else can offer new ideas. Good luck!

I did the dreamfeeding at about 3 weeks and it didn't make him sleep any longer (he took a full breast feed or ocassional bottle feed) so I stopped it but then started it again about 8 weeks and it made him sleep later till about 4ish (not right through though) then he started waking at 2ish so I got fed up with waiting up to feed him later and went to bed early cutting the late feed and he started sleeping longer and at 12 weeks he started sleeping right through from 7.30ish to 6ish.

Unfortunately it only lasted a month before he began waking again. Thats when I started solids cos his weight was dipping. I started dreamfeeding again and have to say it only made him sleep longer 60% of the time. I sometimes was too tired to wait up and he still seemed to wake at the same times, 3 ish and 6ish. I think all his sleep problems were all about hunger though becuse when I introduced protein and dairy etc at 6 months he started sleeping through 95% of the time. Fruit veg and milk wasn't enough.

Sorry that probably doesn't help at all just to say you could try dropping the dream feed and see how long he lasts and then he may take more at that time and thus sleep longer?

Who knows? babies are such illogical creatures.

Good luck. sleep deprivation is a killer. And in the first few months I only seemed to meet mothers whose babies slept through at 5 weeks

have tried to load him with milk all day but he's only taken 22 ozs so far with a dream feed still to come but thats short of the 30 plus ozs he should be taking for his weight. with dd she just guzzled her milk and slept like a log. am using aptimil - maybe he doesn't like it. should i change to sma?

don't know why but he slept until 5am - does this mean he's turned a new leaf???
have fed him every 3 hours today (and sometimes more frequently) so we'll see what he does tonight!

he slept til 5.30am last night. am hoping for great things tonight!

Good luck issywoo - my experience with dd2 8 weeks is that these things just suddenly slot into place. I have a similar situation as you with dd2 taking 5oz in four daytime feeds, then about 3-4oz at 10.30pm. If she feeds in the night then the 7am feed is the smallest - we took this as a sign that she doesn't need the night feed if all the other ones are OK (first she proved this by sleeping until 7 a few times! otherwise we wouldn't have assumed). So she gets diluted formula (1 scoop in 2 oz) if she wakes much before 7. It doesn't send her back off to sleep immediately, but she doesn't cry about it - and then she takes 5oz at 7

dd2 is actually at her hungriest between 4pm and 7pm.

sorry - just re-read that and it doesn't sound at all like a "similar situation".

What I meant to say was that a few weeks ago we had huge trouble getting dd2 to take the appropriate amount of oz's for her weight, and she rarely took more than 2-3oz at one go and it took nearly an hour to do that. That seemed to change rapidly at about 6 weeks

inkstigmata, think i'll try your dliuting tip if he wakes b4 6am. he just doesn't eat enough during the day but like yours gets hungry after 4pm. will try to feed him nearer to midnight and see if that makes a difference. last night he was up at 4am but my dh thinks thats because he had expressed milk and not formula