Extra night feed - whyyy

[KO2018]

Hello - I’m a first time mum, and my little girl is 14 weeks old.

She’s been a pretty okay night sleeper. She has never actually cried at night - I used to set alarms in the first few weeks! When she needs a feed she just starts to shuffle about and start panting and whimpering…

She’s been doing a sleep from around 7pm-midnight, then normally around 4am and starting to wake up by 5:15am (I can usually ignore until 6am feed)

However since I tried her in her new crib that’s all gone to pot! She’s still in our room but I thought she looked a little squashed up in the Moses so tried her in a travel cot. Well, I tried it for a full week but she just kept waking up! I’ve given up now and she’s been back in the basket the last couple nights… but she seems to have picked up an extra night feed. She’ll do 10:30 now as well as 12 and then anything goes really from then. I’ll try to feed her no more than twice after then but that’s a lot of night feeds! I thought she was supposed to be cutting down on them by now…?

She does she genuinely hungry though :( soothing doesn’t seem to work.

Not sure what I should I do?? Feel a bit like I’ve cocked it up now.

(This is such a bog-standard new mum issue I’m sure but with no local meet-ups or family around I’m a bit starved for mum chat!!)

PS. I’m so TIREDDDDDDD! D:

You shouldn't be trying to cut down on or restrict feeds for such a tiny baby, just go with it, if she's hungry she's hungry.

HTeir routines change all the time at that age.

She may not have been very comfortable in the travel cot - can you fit in a proper cot with a decent matress?

She may just be going through a growth spurt, or have adjusted to different naps during the day which has impacted on her sleep at night.

She may be starting to teeth.

I remember one of mine was back on 2 hourly feeds at 8 months - that was a killer!

She’s still tiny. Many babies have many more months of nightfeeds, sorry, despite all those stories of sleeping through from 6 weeks.

It's normal for her sleep and night feeds to still keep changing at this age, could be 4 month sleep regression? I know it's hard when they start sleeping better then back to waking up, mine is 5 months now but he started sleeping through 9pm-5am then started walking twice a night again for feeds. It's changed again since then though I think it was the sleep regression for him. Hang in there! Maybe preserve with the travel cot too since she'll be too big for her basket soon anyway. I also had similar moving him out of crib into travel cot, I think because he was used to a tiny confined space

Growth spurt. Development leap. Do you never have days when your hungrier than normal?

She will double in size in her first year. Why would you think she would cut down on night feeds so young?

Oh my she’s so young! I don’t mean to be a jerk but my nearly 14 MONTH old is still all over the place - 2 nights ago he slept straight through, last night he woke 3 times and would only settle with a breastfeed 🤷🏻‍♀️ As someone who spent far too much time trying to sort their newborn’s sleep, I really recommend you just roll with it as it’ll change frequently +++. The default at that age should still be to assume they are hungry first, they do a phenomenal amount of growing in the first year.

You need a cot with adjustable mattress heights. The problem with travel cots is that the mattress is so low - it's almost impossible to lower baby in there.

Thanks - she’s a little better now we’re back in the Moses I think I’m going to have to get a more comfy mattress in there.

Guess its a long road! My mum keeps saying how I was sleeping through the night by now… I just have to remind her about my dear sister who didn’t sleep at all till she was two lol!!!

Thanks to everyone who posted kind helpful comments

My first slept through at 6 weeks and my second slept through at 6 months (did both the same things with them). Both big babies.

I did the usual keep noise down and night and lights low just feed (bottle) and put straight back down to try and teach them it was night time. If they did a period of a few days sleeping through I thought well they can go the whole night so I was hasty to start feeding again (sounds mean) and I would try to settle with dummy/swaddling etc and ultimately if that didn't work I would feed and put it down to growth spurt.

I didn't bf but heard baby's feed more at night to stimulate milk production/something to do with hormones (sorry may be wrong)!