my 3 month old wakes 5 or 6 times a night for a feed - i can't take it anymore!!

[frannieinthecity]

Please help!
My 3 month old for the past 4 nights has been waking every 2 hours until 3am and then every hour until 6 for a feed (am fully breastfeeding). It is totally unsustainable.

He sometimes seems hungry, sometimes seems to take a tiny suck and go back to sleep. He seems to understand that it is night rather than day as he goes right back to sleep in his cot. Could it be a growing spurt, if so, what should I do and how long does it last?

I am confused about conflicting information. Should I give formula, will this help or will it just diminish my milk supply?

Is it linked to his daytime naps or his feeds in the day? He has a fairly standard routine of feeds and naps (none longer than an hour and a half) and previously he was waking 3 times during the night, which was bad enough , but I was hoping to eek out to longer gaps. We are going in the wrong direction. Any help greatly appreciated..

sympathy +++ have you considered co-sleeping for a while? might just make it less rough on you but I know its not for everyone. It IS probably a growth spurt and it will pass - these patterns come and go as they develop ime, its crushing because you have this false hope sometime that there is light at the end of the tunnel and you will get sleep! But in truth their patterns tend to shift backwards and forwards with growth spurts/illness/other things and your lo is still very small.

Oh you poor thing, you have my sympathy - it's totally awful when you're so, so tired and you just can't see a way to go on. I (and many others here) have been where you are (still am some nights!) and I agree with Jiminy. Co-sleeping is a lifesaver. If you want to do that you can get lots of advice here on how to do so safely. I would never have planned to cosleep but now I'm used to it I love it!

The bottom line is that formula might help in that you can get someone else to help with night feeds but yes, it will probably compromise your milk supply. If continued breastfeeding is important to you then you should think it through carefully because for some people formula feeds can spell wind-down for breastfeeding.

It really might be a growth-spurt, in which case my advice would be to try and roll with it, doing whatever you need to do to get through it, and in a few days it will pass. Don't forget, your baby is still only weeks old and there's nothing wrong with napping in the daytime, calling in favours, eating vast amounts of cake and generally doing absolutely anything that might help you feel better.

I think all of this got easier for me when I got my head round the fact that over time babies do get easier but it isn't a linear progression - three steps forward, two steps back. After a few months you can look back and appreciate that, but in the thick of it in the early days I remember feeling this despair that everything was getting worse, not better. But it does get better, slowly, surely, with setbacks along the way.

Feed him loads in the daytime, make sure he gets plenty of daytime naps, take naps yourself and do please investigate cosleeping. If all else fails, he will grow out of this in time, I promise

My DD started doing the same at 4 months after previously sleeping quite well. One night I just couldn't physically get up out of bed to feed, I was so tired so lifted her out of the cot and into bed. Co-slept from that point on which helped a LOT with my fatigue. Is it something you have thought about? I know it's not for everyone but it saved my sanity.

hi my lo is nearly 5 mths and we having same problem.
she was up 7 times between 7 and 6 last night, she is ex bf and i am holding out on the formula as when i introduced with dd1 i eventually gave up with bf.
We have had this at 3 weeks, 12 weeks, and now , i have read that the 16 is the worst.
I think if you can prepare it's not as bad and it usually lasts no more than a week.
Massive sympathys but if you can get sleep in the day , i have two other dc's so not a chance.

hi all, thanks so much for the sympathy - it helps. I had adjusted to waking up every 3 hours and we were doing fine on it, but the jump to every hour has been such a shock on body and mind!
It's useful to know that it might just be a growing spurt and that it might not last too long. I was worrying that it would be set in stone, bad habits etc.
I know he is still a titch, and I certainly don't want to do all the leaving to cry and so on, he's too small and it's not my style, so I guess I'll have to adjust again to minimal sleep. I knew sleep deprivation was part of the deal, but it's sooooo hard. (what a whinger)

Thanks IateRC and Jimmy - he has lots of naps and eats a lot in the day, and he sleeps in a crib right next to my bed (does that count as co-sleeping?) so I'll take your advice and roll with it for a bit longer to see if he slips out of it...
thanks!!

my 16 month wakes 2 to 3 times a night to feed

she alwasy has

lilyloo, I can't even imagine how you do this with other kids too!!! When it happened at 3 and 12 weeks how long did it last?

Do any of you think it would be better/make a difference if his eating habits were more structured in the day?

thanks so much - so tired my eyeballs are trembling in their sockets. Too much information... :-)

co-sleeping means right in your bed with you so you can feed him lying down - I used to latch dd on and go straight back to sleep

well worth a try

it could also be teeeeeeeeeeething and that lasts a bit longer. in that case make sure your DS is in deep sleep when you put him down.

co-sleeping is a great idea but it never worked out for us

I think from your op that sometimes he is hugry and sometimes it is for comfort/his sleep association. do you usually feed him to sleep or do you put him down to go to sleep awake?

Around this age I realised dd2 was just comfort sucking - I couldn't co-sleep so I stopped feeding her during the night - she started cuddling her rabbit and sucking her thumb instead and then slept through the night 7-7.

co-sleeping saved my sanity - ds2 is nearly 8mo, eats 3 x solid meals a day, has 1xbottle of formula between 10.30 and 11.30pm and STILL wakes 3 times/night. I tell myself it's better than the 5 or 6 it used to be and that interrupted sleep is better than none.

I think from your op that sometimes he is hugry and sometimes it is for comfort/his sleep association. do you usually feed him to sleep or do you put him down to go to sleep awake?

Around this age I realised dd2 was just comfort sucking - I couldn't co-sleep so I stopped feeding her during the night - she started cuddling her rabbit and sucking her thumb instead and then slept through the night 7-7.

I usually feed him to sleep to be honest, do you think this is the cause of the problem? Should I be putting him down to sleep awake on his own now?

Teething is a possibility because even though he's young he has started dribbling a lot and rubbing his gums - would teething make him want to feed through the night and wake him up constantly?

Cargirl, how did you go about stopping feeding in the night? Did you let your baby cry, how did that transition work?

He did sleep in bed with me right at the beginning, maybe I'll give it a go again...

sorry about so MANY questions!!

My first suggestion would be to wake you baby up after he has fed so that he learns to go to sleep without a sleep prop from you. When you've conquered that for daytime naps and putting him to bed in the evening then you may find the night waking peters off by its own accord anyway.

every baby is different but mine was waking up too often and it got better when the teeth came through. her first teeth came at 4 months even thou she's ebf.

probably the pain wakes them up and probably is that they eat poorly during the day (because of the pain) and they have to make it up during the night.

frannie, I just want to add that at 3 months it's entirely possible that she's actually just hungry in the night. It's very, very young to go without feeding. Even you or I would be unlikely to go 10-12 hours without maybe a snack and definitely not without a drink.

To be honest, at that age I wouldn't bother too much with 'training'. I spent an awful lot of time trying and failing to teach DS to go to sleep by himself when he was tiny, and he simply wasn't ready. It made both of us upset and frustrated, we both lost sleep and made me feel like a failure when it didn't work. Now he's older I'm doing some gentle training, and he is ready now, and it feels much easier and less stressful. They're all different and it's really not worth stressing yourself out it too much, in my experience. By all means have a go but if it doesn't work out just remember that it will happen naturally when she's ready - 'til then just hang tight!

Frannie! so much sympathy - here's some stuff I've learned recently with my 23 week old DD:

She needs to be put down relaxed but awake. recently DH has been rocking her for TOO LONG. (She cons us by falling asleep with her eyes open!) She then wakes, realises we're not there, wails inconsolably ... Sometimes it's, put down - cry - pick up - put down - cry - pick up ... we've been here before, she got the idea in the end, and will again.

Suckling soothes her teething pains! When she recently started demanding 5 feeds a night I felt she wasn't just comfort sucking because they were big hungry sucks, but then I realised this makes the breast rub hard on the gums which made them feel better. Dentinox gel meant I could ditch several of the feeds I'd had to resort to giving her during unprecedented frequent wakings.

She needs regularity during the day. my milk supply crashed once so I had to just feed whenever, day and night, for 2 weeks and she was really fretful as she had no routine. As soon as we got back on track with feeds at 7am, 11am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm (ish!!!) she was much happier... I now know she only NEEDS 1 feed in the night (though she often asks for more, but that's my problem which I'm gonna do another post about!)

I almost resorted to formula a few weeks back, I didn't know WHY the world health org recommends EXCLUSIVE BF for 6 months, but now I do and I'm really glad I held off. You can do it!

Any chance you can express lots of milk (save it up in the freezer over a few days if need be. At 3 mos my DD needed about 120mls to get through a night I think) and leave someone else in charge of your LO while you get a full night's sleep in another room? Doing this now and again absolutely saves my life. This weekend DH is on baby-watch, she doesn't expect BFs from him so in the past this has helped cure her of bad habits. Fingers crossed for us and for you.

Frannie the previous growth spurts didn't last more than a week.
I think this one is worse due to the teething aspect too. My dd has always been great at getting herself to sleep and goes down awake all the time. She also hs a dummy but that won't settle her most times in the night so i believe she is hungry, although will try some teething gel before feed to see if that works.
I do know it passes but it's bloody hard and how quickly you forget