To wake at 10.30 or not?

[Leela31]

My DD2 is now 7 weeks old. With DD1, I always woke her at 10.30ish at night to feed her and she eventually went from 2 night wakings, down to 1 and then through the night until she dropped the 10.30 feed and went 7-7 from around 5months.

I tried the same with DD2 but since she was still waking twice after the 10.30 feed and because I was getting fed up waiting till then, a week ago, I stopped waking her up at that time. Now, she usually settles at 7.30 and then wakes at 1.30ish and 5.30ish. Since I have no experience of this routine with DD1, I am not sure whether to persist or go back to waking her at 10.30 in the hope that she might now only wake up once.

I guess I am looking for some feedback from people who have not woken their children at 10.30 to find out their experience or any feedback at all!

hi, prob not what you want to hear but i've never had any success waking babe at 10.30 or 11pm to feed. it didn't make one jot of difference to her night feeding pattern which has always been to wake once anywhere from 1.30 - 3.30am and usually then sleep till 6.30 or 7am. In fact, if anything, waking her at 10.30 (she goes to bed 7.30 / 8ish) made her wake more in the night! I also tried dreamfeeding for 10 days (ie not really waking her, just feeding her asleep) but that also didn't make any difference. heigh ho.

I've tried different approaches, with DD1 I did the dream feed at 10.30pm but gave a FF (she was BF) and she slept until 6am from 9 weeks. Tried the same with her brother (with both formula and a BF) and it had no effect whatsoever! He was a bigger baby and continued with a 2am and 5am feeds until he was 11 months old.

So now we are on DS2 and I have just gone with the flow and no given any dream feeds. Just fed when he has wanted feeding. He has been a great sleeper from the start and from about 7 weeks, he started going from 7/8pm to 2am, then 3am, etc. until he got to 6am at 10 weeks. We then had the school holidays and a growth spurt so he went back to more frequent night feeds but now at 16 weeks he seems to be going back to just one feed a night. Last night it was 4am and then he slept until 8.40am!! (although the 4am feed did have a trace of white wine which may have helped).

This is a long way of saying, for me it is a matter of trial and error. The biggest benefit I found with DS2 is that I can go to bed when I want and don't have to wait around until 10.30pm which can seem really hard when you are v tired. Hope that helps a little bit.

It certainly doesn't make a difference with my dd. So many people say you should, that I try it every few weeks for a few nights, but she still wakes the same in the rest of the night. I guess it depends on your baby - I am happy that not waking is the right thing for us, but would never claim it wouldn't work for another baby.

You could try splitting the 10/10:30pm feed - what seems to be working this week with my dd (6 weeks - growth spurt, I guess) is a half feed at 10/10:30pm and then a top up at 11:15pm/11:30pm - but this is mainly because she wakes up too fully when we wake her up for the 10:30pm feed. However, she's a really small baby, so maybe she just needs the extra calories.

So many different ways of doing it! I gave up on the 10ish feed for a bit when I was having to wake up later on in any case, mainly as I couldn't stay awake until then myself, and didn't want to wake up to do it. Once DS2 was sleeping to about 5ish, I reintroduced 10pm feed, and he makes it to about 7 most mornings now. Having said that, life only really settled down once he was on solids. He is huge, about 91st centile, and was so before I started him on solids, so boob only was a huge struggle.
I reckon the best way to give mums post natal depression is to tell them they must breastfeed solely until 6 months!!
Good luck with whatever you try.

DD3 is 7W and I'm still sticking with 10.30 for now. When she wakes after that has varied a lot. For a long while it was 2.30am and a couple of times it has been 3, 4, 5 or (once!) 7am but it yo-yos a lot now. Last couple of nights she has woken around 3am and not fed very well and not settled afterwards either so we am starting to think it is a habit-wake-up not proper hunger. We (DH) would carry on feeding anyway but since she is unsettled even after DH has fed her (at least, for the last couple of nights) we have more incentive to try re-settling with no feed I think.

We did 10.30 with DD2 and DD1. DD2 pushed through to 7am right around now (7W) and with DD1 it was 10W I think.

I wonder about leaving DD3 to wake up naturally but when she is down to one night feed I would prefer it to be 10.30 not 4am if that's possible.

This is driving me crazy! I switched back to waking her at 10.30 and for 4 nights, she woke at either 3.30 or 4.30 which was good and I woke her around 7.15 to start the day. Last night though, she woke at 3.00 and then woke at 6.30 which then throws our day completely as it is too early! I really have no clue what to do and am pretty exhausted having to wait up till 10.30, especially since I do all the night feeds and have a toddler at home most days.

I guess what I am interested to know is if I just don't wake her and feed twice in the night, will she just sleep later and later from 7.30 bedtime coming down to one night feed and then eventually none? Please let me know your experiences.

I only ever woke my dd at midnight if I was still up she is 13 weeks and has been sleeping through the night for bout a week not......froma bout 8-10 weeks she started having one night feed...I let her totally lead with demand feeding ....now we are semi-routine...

It took till bout 9 weeks to get a proper routine of sorts i.e. her having bath before bedtime...

the turning point for me was I fed her at 7pmish then dream fed and midnight and she woke up at 1:30am wanting another feed (but she couldn't have been hungry) so I gave her water she had 1floz when back to sleep.... then I started after the early morning feed 5amish I would take her in the bed to resettle her... then some days as she was getting nearer and nearer to 6am I took her in our bed and she fell back to sleep so she wasn't hungry makes me think its more out of habit! I did this for a week after a week I cuddled her to settle her and put her back in moses basket and she went back to sleep and now going through the night

HTH