Night feeds at 28 weeks

[mumofone234]

DS is 28 weeks old and has done brilliantly in the last few weeks at going to sleep independently, both in the daytime and at night. We’re now able to put him in his crib awake, shut the door and leave him to go to sleep. However he’s still waking regularly in the night to eat. He was just doing this twice in the period from 7.30pm-7am but now he’s waking three times. He goes down at about 7.30pm, then will wake at about 11, and then usually again at about 3 and 5. Is this normal? How many times should he reasonably expect to feed in the night at this age? I’m shattered and want to try to stop it, but don’t want to do so if he’s genuinely hungry.

28 weeks? Is that about 6.5 months?

For anyone to advise we probably need to know how much milk he is getting during the day and if you have started weaning yet?

Every kind of routine is pretty much normal at this age though.

Yes he’s 6.5 months old now. It’s hard to say how much he’s eating during the day as he’s breastfed, but he usually eats every 2-3 hours. So probably six feeds in the daytime and then three overnight. We’ve just started weaning so he’ll have some vegetable purée or porridge once a day at about 6pm, and then have another milk feed at about 7pm.

Sounds about right. Night wakings often increase when you wean. Mine didn’t sleep through until they were between 9 and 12 mo.

Did yours then do it naturally, or did you have to gradually night wean?

It really is normal for night waking at this stage and they go through a huge growth spurt st 6 month.

DS was feeding 5/6 times at night for about 3 weeks at 6 months. It dropped back down to 2/3 after his growth spurt. HV said it was completely normal.
We went through an amazing 2 weeks of 2 wakings (around 11pm and 3am) but now we are back up to 3 feeds and hours of being awake while he practises crawling and pulling himself up

100% normal and actually pretty good going compared to some babies.

LazyDaisy - glad it’s not just me with a baby who likes to practice crawling in his sleep

My DD is the same age and she still wakes between 2-4 times per night. Rarely she treats me to a solid 5-7 hours but more often than not it's 3 max. I bought 'the gentle sleep book' which I recommend, and according to that it's normal. Doesn't make it any easier though!

In my and my friends' experiences bf babies are loath to let go of their night time feeds. Some do, but most don't and go on feeding until they're toddlers. I night weaned both of mine at around 7 months or so, it's what made the biggest difference to their sleep. It's not easy for you because you will worry if they're getting enough food, but they quickly learn to increase their intake during the day. I'd definitely recommend night weaning if you want a chance at improving sleep.

I don’t know if I feel pleased or not that this is normal! Sigh.

It might be useful to develop an alternate way to settle baby in the night that isn't feeding. When baby learns to 'sleep through', that is not usually at the same time as night weaning. So first baby will learn to be resettles without feeding and so not need night feeds, but still wakes in the night. At that point, then baby can start to learn to sleep through without waking.

FATEdestiny I didn’t realise that, thanks! I’m still such a novice at this! I’ve spoken to my husband and he’s going to do the resettling at times when we think he really doesn’t need a feed.