Any tips to help me to get my 17 week old to sleep through?

[blue27]

My gorgeous DS is a pretty easy baby (I think; he's the first so it's hard to judge!) and I feel a bit guilty complaining but I'm being driven crazy by all around me banging on about their babies sleeping through beautifully from 6/10/12 weeks etc etc! Having looked at some threads on here I actually already feel a bit less inadequate as it's clear that lots of mums have lots more problems than me. Why I never meet these mums in real life I don't know! Are all the smug ones lying??
Anyway, DS goes to sleep brilliantly at 7ish and has done since 6 weeks. He used to sleep through till 3ish, then have a feed, then sleep again till 6-7am ish. I thought this was great and that eventually the 3am feed would disappear. All the mums in my mum and baby group seemed to be doing the dreamfeed to encourage their babies to sleep right through but it just doesn't feel right. All along my big instinct has been not to wake him when he's sleeping and I just don't like the idea of feeding him when he's fast asleep. Perhaps I'm wrong though as one by one everyone but me seem to be getting full nights of sleep...
Now suddenly at 17 weeks instead of getting better things are getting worse at night! Now he's waking at 9ish for a feed, then 2ish and then up at 530ish... Help! Should I still be feeding him at these times or soothing him some other way? He seems hungry but tends to just have a small feed and then instantly go back to sleep again. It would be pretty hard to resist the feeding as it works so speedily but perhaps I should?
Also my mum is adamanant that he's hungry for more than just milk and that I should get stuck into rusks/rice with milk to fill him up more so that he will sleep through?
As you can tell I'm feeling really confused and indecisive! I feel like I've been coping pretty well so far and now have hit a brick wall. DH works such long hours it's all pretty much left to me and I'm getting really tired now which isn't helping.
Have rambled on long enough now! Sorry. Any ideas / advice / reassurance would be much appreciated!

Oof, I wish I knew. I'm having EXACTLY the same problems with my five-month-old, and have been since about 17 weeks. (See my thread 'WTF is going on with my four-month-old down the list).

It's so frustrating isn't it. Just when you think you have it cracked, they go and change entirely.

I've tried doing a dreamfeed at 11, but the main result of that seems to be he'll do a gigantic pooh at around 2, so I have to get up anyway and feed him back to sleep. Last night he fed at 11, then woke up at 2.30 hungry. But then slept until 8, showing he can go 5 or 6 hours between feeds. But other nights he wakes up every three hours or so, and I don't know if he's hungry or just awake, so I have the same dilemma about whether to take the easy option of feeding him back to sleep.

Some have said to give him solids, some have said it would be counter productive as he'll then not have room for the milk.

He's BF, but gets very distracted during the day, so maybe he's not getting enough.

He's not a great napper during the day, and I'm not sure if that's part of the problem, but I'm beginning to feel totally inadequate. What with that and the sleep deprivation, I get a bit short with DS sometimes, which makes me cry with guilt.

So, in short I feel your pain!

Don't hate me, I swear I'm not smug about DS sleeping through because I'm sure it's not much to do with me, and more to do with the variations in babies.

He was doing the same thing as your DS just before he slept through, down at 7-8pm, waking just once at 3am for a feed. Then he did drop it, I think helped by having 6oz EBM just before bed. When we've been away and he's BF for the last feed, he sometimes has woken up again.

He is 15 weeks now, and has started to resist going to bed! Used to be we could just put him in the hammock and turn on his mobile, and he'd be out within 5 minutes (or if not sleeping, just lying quietly). Now he starts screaming when the grobag comes out! And he never naps more than 10-20 minutes during the day. I'm at these mums who go on about their DCs' 2-3 hour naps!

I'm going through the exact same thing (I also have a thread on the go about it) so no advice but lots of sympathy. I don't honestly think there's much that can be done.

If possible catch up on sleep when you can. (I always thought this was impossible but did resort to crawling back into bed at 9am after dropping ds1 at nursery the other day - ds2 was asleep in the car seat so I took him up to the bedroom with me and managed to get half an hour. Even that was enough to tide me over.)

I wouldn't be tempted to wean early though - it will just cause more disappointment when it doesn't work! Milk has more calories anyway.

Dream feed worked really well for me as it meant I could give it to him before I went to bed myself at 10.30-11ish, then he slept longer and longer until he was going right through til morning from the dream feed. I cut out the dream feed quite late at about 9 months, with no problems, and he continued to sleep through the night.

But a growth spurt seems quite likely, in which case you just have to get through it and hope he'll feed less soon!

Good luck - I know if feels deathly when you're having to get up, but he's really too young to be thinking about solutions like feeding solids or not feeding him when he wakes (IMHO!).

But how long do these buggering blasted growth spurts last? My DS started his night wakings a month ago, at about 17 weeks, and has been doing them ever since. Before that he'd sleep 10 til 8, or so.

Mind you, he does seem to have doubled in size: he's the youngest in my nct group, but just about the biggest!

dd2 had a growth spurt that seemed to last a month round this sort of time
it was a nightmare!

just got to ride it out...

I'm another one in the same situation- ds is now 20 weeks and used to sleep 10-8ish with one night feed but since around 13 weeks wakes loads in the night! He seems perfectly content and happy though so I won't be weaning early. Just got to ride it out I guess! After 7 weeks of sleep deprivation I can say that you do learn to cope with it! Hopefully yours is just having a growth spurt and it will pass soon though

Off and on night waking here too since 16/17 weeks. Prior, DD had been sleeping through since about 6 weeks (by which I mean a 6 hour stretch which gradually lengthened to 8 or 9 hours). I'm putting it down to growth spurt TBH. And drinking wine (me, not her) makes it worse I'm with mamaduckbone - have a nap in the day if you can.

Am just as new to this as you so only want to offer some support. My DD was exactly yhe same untill I (some people may think this is wrong) started to offer her a bottle every three hours during the day without fail. she went from waking 2 or 3 times a night to either 7-7 or 7-7 with one wake. Might just be fluke but I guess they need X amount of milk over 24 hours and im "tanking" her up during the day. Might work?? I bet mine goes all wrong tonight now, Haha!

againandagain - was your DD previously breastfed? My DS gets BF every three hours, with the odd formula top-up, shortening to every two hours in the evening. When he gets a vast bottle of formula.

Last night he woke at 12 (when I'd just fallen into a deep sleep) hungry, then at 3.30 with a dirty nappy.

The night poohs are particularly annoying. Never used to happen, and seem to be a function of being fed more in the evenings to make him sleep through!

No she has always been bottle fed. My DD goes through stages of 'night poos'. She hasnt done it for weeks now but did do it on and off. Maybe offer a very small amount of water during the day to try to encourage some ,erm 'movement'! Was last night any better?

OMG. Last night, gave him a dream feed of about 5oz at 10.30, and he woke up at.... drum roll... 8am!!! I kept waking up, anticipating his crying, but none came! Praise be!

And when I changed his nappy first thing, he'd even done a pooh and not complained!

Let's just hope that wasn't a fluke... The only thing different about yesterday was a longer nap in the afternooon (1hr instead of 45mins) and a small top up of his afternoon boob feed.

Well done baby herbaceous! He needs to teach babyParanoid a thing or 2! Last night he was up hourly, sometimes for feeds and at others trying to poo but failing. Plus 2 nappy changes resulting in v. awake baby. I think I'm dying!

againandagain- I used to find feeding loads in the day helped. Alas, no more