Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Weaning

Find weaning advice from other Mumsnetters on our Weaning forum. Use our child development calendar for more information.

Original poster

4 months - too young to wean ??? Waking 5 times a night

33 replies

Inlovewithbaby · 28/11/2011 11:05

my gorgeous little one is only 19 weeks old but after going to bed at 8pm wakes up crying for milk at 11, 3 (sometimes earlier ) 4,6,7.30 and then 9 etc.... I try and catch up on my sleep in the morning but cant. He is putting on weight but had dropped centimes last time he was weighed (he is double the weight he was born and very healthy, bright eyed). I wonder if he is ready for some solids? A spoonful of rice or mashed carrot for example mixed with breast milk. Or is any food before 6 months strictly a no no?

OP posts:
Original poster
Inlovewithbaby · 28/11/2011 17:34

The WHO chart shows kg on the side and months along the bottom, does anyone know how to read the lines arching across the chart, they say -2 , -3 then 0 then 2, 3. Am I being thick because I can't work it out. My little one was ( has obviously grown side then ) 5.36 kg at 16 weeks, however he had been really fidget feeding the 2 weeks before that, and he has been feeding properly since then, mainly at night !! As per my original thread art Hugh.

OP posts:
Original poster
Inlovewithbaby · 28/11/2011 17:38

That was meant to end arghhhh predictive text!!!!!

OP posts:
LittleMilla · 28/11/2011 18:23

I weaned DS a bit early and must say that it made bugger all difference to his sleeping - he just needed to get through the four month sleep regression. Ours lasted for about 2 weeks in total. My DS is now almost 7 months.

We didn't have a routine as such, but from early days he's had sleepy time rituals. And throughout the day i'd try and get him to nap every 2 hours or so. Starting solids properly (which I waited until 6 motnhs to do) has made me a lot more structured about the day so that he gets the right amount of milk/food. It looks something like this:

Up at 7am ish - breastfeed
Breakfast at 8am is - porridge/weetabix
Nap from 9-10:30 (DS was a prolific 45 min napper until he started to crawl about a month ago, now he's obv knackered!)
11am breastfeed
Midday lunch
12:30/1 - nap for about an hour if we're lucky
3pm breastfeed
3:30/4 - nap fr about 40 mins
5 ish - tea
6:30pm bath
6:45pm boob
7pm bed

I don't stick to everything to a tee and if DS wants to get up for the day at say 6:15am, I just try and stretch him out throughout the morning to get us back on track.

Oh and until we were properly established on the three meals a day, he'd get a dreamfeed of formula when we went to bed at 10:30pm. I found that in giving him the dreamfeed, I knew that if he woke up before 3am he probably wasn't hungry so would let him cry fr a bit before going to him - often he'd go back on his own.

He's almost sleeping through without the DF now, but wakes up at about 5am for a feed. but 9/10 will go back to sleep until about 7am.

I hope that helps? x

Original poster
Inlovewithbaby · 28/11/2011 19:03

Amazing answer LittleMilla, I am actually going to write that down before it disappears into the quagmire of e mails on here. Thanks.

OP posts:
BertieBotts · 29/11/2011 08:54

There's a guidance document somewhere on the web for reading centile charts. I can't find it now and I'm about to go out but maybe someone can find it?

lilham · 29/11/2011 09:17

You mean like this one? The explanation is with the pdf, which I think is also in the red book. I can't see the -2, -3 Inlovewithbaby mentioned though.

BertieBotts · 29/11/2011 11:14

There's another one, it's linked to from the same page the charts are, it's just all the links I was finding earlier were old ones where the files are no longer there.

The one I'm thinking of explains how to read the centile charts without the actual charts on there - it just goes into more detail and is easy to understand.

Mine doesn't have -2 or -3 on either, out of memory, but DS is 3 and I have the old charts in his book. I'm pretty sure that red books issued after 2009 have the new charts in which are based on breastfed babies. There is no separate chart for FF babies because ideally they should be following BF babies' patterns of weight gain as well, if they're not, we need to be adjusting the feeding methods and/or composition of formula, that is how I understand the thinking to be anyway.

I'll see if I can find the one I mean.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page