Do you feed as much or as little as possible in the night?

[joanneg20]

I've been wondering about this for a while. DS is 4 months old and a pretty good sleeper - will go 7 til 7 with either 0, 1 or 2 wake-ups. When he does wake up, he eats quickly and goes straight back to sleep.

So my question is this: should I, the first time he wakes up, feed him as much as possible in the hope that he'll then go through the rest of the night without another wake-up, or do I give him the bare minimum to get him back to sleep, so that he gets used to not eating much in the night?

What's the official wisdom on this?

No advice but curious to hear the answers here. My DS is 12 weeks and has been sleeping through for a few weeks now, 8-6 roughly. We give him 6oz EBM before bed and it seems to take him all the way through. If it were me, I'd rather do one big feed instead of waking up lots of times!

12 hours with only 2 feeds max sounds AMAZING.

I'd just go with baby's needs. If he wants to eat more - give him more. I am of the opinion that they will stop needing to be fed in the night when they are ready.

I'd understand if he was waking 5-6 times but the way he is at the moment - just go with the flow and enjoy... what a brilliant baby! I'd be thrilled to have mine sleeping like that in the night!

I would suggest that you feed as little as possible, obviously following the baby's needs, but don't feed unless you have to and are unable to settle him without feeding and when you do feed give as little as you can get away with. Clearly I would never recommend not feeding a baby that needs it, but if he can go through without feeding then you'll probably find he feeds more during the day and so you have a virtuous circle of less night feeding meaning better day time feeding leading to less night feeding etc. With all my 3, once they had started to sleep through they would occasionally wake up, but I could usually manage to resettle without feeding and within a short time the night wakes dropped out altogether.

4 months is too young to try and force out the night feeds. If your baby is already occasionally sleeping through the night, he is likely to go back to sleeping through when the 4-month growth spurt is over. Babies are either good sleepers or bad sleepers. IME there's very little parents can truly do to force the latter into being the former without resorting to CC. It's just more bother than it's worth if your baby is already sleeping through fairly regularly.

Concur with pretty much everything ches just said.

But I would certainly try and give a good feed the first time he wakes up, that might be enough to get him through the rest of the night then try to just shush pat if he wakes up again.

If you like your morning sleep, you could alternatively do the shushing/patting first and then give a big feed in the early hours to get him back to sleep for longer in the morning.

Am certainly no expert though, mine still wakes up a lot at 18mths!

Thanks everyone. Have no intention of trying to force out night feeds if he wants them, and realise he is doing really well for his age! Was just wondering whether I should be giving him the minimum necessary to get him back to sleep or trying to 'tank him up' as I would at his pre-bedtime feeding.