19-week old waking several times a night - MIL suggesting Medised.....what do you think??

[naturopath]

My 19-week old DS is waking pretty much every hour throughout the night. Not sure why - could be hunger/excema/habit. Soemtimes I feed him, sometimes he will go back to sleep with themobile / DH rocking him. Usually settles back to sleep pretty quickly. DH therefore rules out hunger as main cause of waking.

Anyway, MIL now suggesting I give him Medised to help him sleep.

What do you oh wise MNters think?? (personally I am v anti drugs for no good reason, butmaybe I'm wrong)

Has he always been a poor sleeper or is this a bad patch? If it's a bad patch you may well find it stops as randomly as it started.

I'm not saying Medised doesn't have it's place, and it can be useful to break a cycle, but I would eliminate the other possibilities first.

Is he quite cool - otherwise his eczema will really bother him. Have you been given anything for him for that?

Can you ensure he gets lots of milk over the course of the evening so he is definitely not hungry. Also if you feed him when he wakes does he sleep longer than an hour? If so, he's waking due to hunger.

It's v unlikely to be "habit" at this stage so I'm not really sure that Medised would work, but I'm no expert.

He's still very little - I personally wouldn't give Medised to a child at any age, but certainly not at 19 weeks.

Have you thought of taking him into bed with you? It's easier to feed him then and with a bit of luck everyone'll get more sleep.

The other thing to remember with babies, is that practically everything is a "phase"! Hang in there for a week or so, and you'll be on to the next phase, whatever that it!

am i wrong in thinking that Medised is a medicine NOT a sleep aid??

he's 19 weeks. he's still tiny. if it's that much of a problem just take him into bed with you.

Gave my son medised for teething when he was coming up for 2 and it had the opposite effect on him, he was up all night raring to go like it was party time. As others have said everything is a cycle try and tell yourself it will get better.

I seem to be repeating myself a lot atm, but 4-5 months is a classic time for sleep to go haywire:

moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/2006/02/qa_what_are_sle.html

Medised may help if it's teething or a cold keeping him awake, but won't help otherwise (at least it has never made DS go to sleep if there wasn;t a specific pain-related problem). Ignore your MIL

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Here in Canada there has just been a big hoo-haa about not cold and cough remedies / anti-histemine to children under 2.

I wouldn't if I were you, try co-sleeping.
Good luck, I know it's very hard.

Have been co-sleeping on and off for weeks now. Doesn't really solve the waking up problem, although it does help me in that I don't have to get out of bed all the time.

Believe me, I am totally against giving Medised for this - just wanted to check if I was alone in thinking this - clearly not!

Am already cluster-feeding as well, and has been around 5-6 weeks like this already. Isn't that a rather long growth spurt??

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I have a 20 week old, in the last month or so he's gone from sleeping 6 or 9 hours continuous to waking every 3 hours or more often. As others have said it is a classic time for this, and others on my post-natal thread have experienced the same ( you are very welcome if you'd like to join us here
I was also told by a paediatrician this age is too young for antihistamine stuff, so pass that on to your MIL.

Hellish, I'd be interested to hear what they're saying in Canada about this.

I think (notsure) that medised is not recommended for babies under 6 months. ALso I find it only helps send them off to sleep it doesn;t help keep them asleep as it only lasts about 3-4 hours. So I'd try some alternative suggestions.

lennygirl - he sleeps pretty much GF recommended hours during the day - about 30 mins in the morning, around 2 hours at lunchtime, and 30 mins in the afternoon.
Can be varied but usually totals around 3 hours,and not too close to bedtime.
hmm