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18 week old wakening every 2 hours!

2 replies

LRQ1217 · 23/07/2017 07:32

Help!! My lo is 18 weeks and was a brilliant sleeper right from the start. The past few weeks however not so much wakening for a feed every 2 hours! My hv advised to start weaning as my lo was falling below the centile for her weight (even though she looked and is healthy) from this has started she is wakening through the night! I'm exhausted please help!

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Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
redphonebox · 23/07/2017 07:55

It is totally normal for babies to start waking more at this age, although frustrating when you previously had a good sleeper. It's called the four month sleep regression. Hopefully someone will be along soon with some tips. I just had to ride it out and eventually it got better...

The advice from your HV seems odd to me. 18 weeks is quite early to start weaning. And if weight is a concern then the easiest way to increase calories is to offer more milk. Both breastmilk and formula milk have a lot more calories than most of the early weaning foods.

FATEdestiny · 23/07/2017 08:34

Do you mean weaning on to formula milk from the breast?

It's fine to mix feed or move to formula feeding if you want to. Or stay breastfeeding. The answer to your sleep issue will probably come, in part, from needing to feed more frequently in the daytime.

Don't give your baby non-milk solids, that would be completely ridiculous and your hv won't have advised this just for dropping a centile.

HV don't normally get concerned unless two centile lines are dropped. Moving above or below one centile line is not unusual and no significant cause for concern, except noting baby may want more milk so offering more.

It's perfectly reasonable that a baby needing lots of calories will have a full feed every 2 hours during the day. If the feeds are smaller amounts they may be wanted even more frequently.

As well as offering more milk in the daytime (and by daytime I mean 7am-11pm, your awake hours in the day), which should be the primary focus, I would also look at settling methods.

Have you developed a way to get baby to sleep that is not feeding? I found a dummy and a hand on baby's chest whilst in the cot worked best.it is quite possible that a number of these wakes in the night are baby just wanting help to get into a deep sleep, rather than hunger.

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