CC, GW...advice needed for tonight please (long post...sorry)

[JimJammum]

DS is 20 weeks. He goes off to sleep nicely at 7pm, wakes for a feed between 10 and 10.30pm and then goes off again nicely....and then from about 1am onwards he wakes every hour to hour & half. I have been offering him 2 feeds in this time every 3 hours but he hasn't been having much and I suspect has been using me for comfort. He has a dummy, and I can be up several times putting it back in and have to resettle him but putting my hand on his head and breathing gently near his ear before he will go off again.

Last night, I let him cry before going in and putting dummy in and refused to feed until 5.10am - again he barely ate much so is clearly not hungry. I also wouldn't settle him as usual.The long and short of it all is that he was awake and crying on and off from 2.25 to 4.45am. At that point I put my hand on his chest to try and settle him, which worked after 20 mins only for him to cry again when I left the room. After his feed I still had to give him the dummy twice more to get him to sleep til 8am.

This situation has got to change as I am at the end of my tether. If I do cc, do I keep giving him the dummy and how long do I do it for? Would gw be better as he is clearly attached to me? Fortunately, he doesn't seem to hate me this morning, but I hate myself as I feel I have brought this situation on by helping him to settle in the early days.

All constructive help appreciated. Will check back later.

Is your ds getting plenty milk during the day? If he is you can rule out waking from hunger especially if he hardly takes any.

It does sound like he has gotten into the habit of waking for cuddles.

The tough route would be to get rid of dummy and teach him how to settle himself back to sleep on his own - easier said than done I know.

I would read 'The Baby Whisperer' by Tracy Hogg which gives great tips for night time wakings. She doesn't promote cc but rather shh-patting which is sitting with baby and helping them re-settle but only picking them up if they are very distressed.

I got rid of ds's dummy when he was 6 weeks old as I felt I was using it more and more and ds kept waking durig the night when it fell out. We never looked back.

Hope this helps.

We are doing GW/GR - in the middle of it. The quickest solution is to get your DH/DP to go in and try and settle before feeding during the night. My DD was also waking up for cuddles 4/5 times a night at that stage. At 20 weeks you would expect 1/2 feeds per night.

JJmum, your ds is only 5 months and you already have a good routine
in place and seem really in tune with your boy without being run by him -
more power to you!

And I think you have answered your own question: remove the dummy but
use GW as your ds seems to really need your presence to relax.

Good luck (not sure you need it )

what is GW/GR?

Gradual Withdrawal / Retreat