BabyWhispererForums.com
SLEEP => Night Wakings => Topic started by: KellyC on February 14, 2006, 19:39:39 pm
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Hi All
My little boy Zander is just over 5 months old and is exclusively BF. He started sleeping through the night at a very early age (I think about 6 or 8 weeks) and is a fantastic independent sleeper thanks to sleep training at 12 weeks with pat/shush, which has now evolved into PU/PD when required.
For most of his growth spurts I've made sure I've started feeding him from both sides twice (!) during the day to avoid getting into the habit of feeding at night but I fear I've missed one ..... ::) For the past few weeks (I think - I lose track of time!) Zander's been waking in the night for a feed. I know he's hungry and not waking for any other reason, in fact I can usually hear his tummy rumbling when I go to him!
Last night I decided to start cutting down on the minutes I BF for during the night to try and get him to eat more during the day. We won't be weaning him until he's 6 months old and I don't believe introducing solid food is the answer - he needs more milk during sociable hours! A 'normal' daytime feed is about 10 minutes but when I looked at the clock a couple of nights ago I noticed he fed for 18 minutes when he woke in the early hours. Last night I restricted his early hours feed to 10 minutes and he went down again very easily but woke 1.5 hours later hungry again (I tried PU/PD for 10 minutes or so but he was clearly hungry). So I fed him again and this time only 5 minutes which saw him through until 7.30am or thereabouts. So it seems he's actually taking the equivalent of 2 feeds during the night - I'm so cross with myself for letting us get into this habit >:(
I don't know whether I should let him feed for a little longer when he wakes tonight, say 15 minutes or to stick with 10 minutes and hope he doesn't wake a second time - I don't want him getting used to waking twice in the night for a feed! I've been trying so hard to get him to eat more today by feeding him in his room (one of the reasons he doesn't eat much during the day is that he's very easily distracted) and just sticking with it long after he's started losing interest and may have got a little more into him but not a huge amount. Our average routine looks like this;
E 7.00
S 9.00 - 9.45
E 11.00
S 12.00 - 14.00
E 15.00
S 16.15 - 17.00
E 19.00
S 19.30
A couple of times recently he's napped for longer at lunchtime (2.5 hours or so) and has dropped his catnap and has stayed happy until bedtime which we've brought forward to 7pm.
Thanks for your help
Kelly x
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you sound like your on the right track. I'd suggest you try to move your daytime feeding up half an hour so you get a 4th feeding into his daytime routine, and do a dreamfeed at 10:30-11pm. That would most likely give him the extra calories he needs during the day, and hopfully cut his night feeding.
I'm happy to hear you say you want to wait untill 6 months to introduce solids. I know there is a lot of pressure to do it sooner. Good for you for sticking to it.
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Oh, I forgot to mention that I already do a DF at 10.30pm although just lately he sometimes wakes for it before then. He already has 4 feeds a day (excluding the DF) - do you mean give him 5 feeds again? We moved to a 4 hour EASY when he started snacking on a 3 - 3.5 hour EASY so I'm not sure I'd get any more food into him by giving him an extra feed, he'd just eat less at each sitting.
Thanks again
Kelly xx