3 month old still waking twice a night, should i bf or wean her off?

[Lovejoy]

we're on a 3hr easy but i'm thinking of going to 3.5 or 4hr easy as dd is not so hungry for the 1pm and 4pm feed and then struggles with 7pm feed too, but she still wakes twice a night regardless if i try df.
shouldn't she be down to 1 NW feed anyway?
the problem with NW is that we jump in to feed her as we don't want her waking up our dd1 toddler next door.  i've tried the dummy recently and it puts her off for a while.  do you think we should wean her off the 1.45am feed or 4.30ish feed with a dummy? (although as we don't use a dummy otherwise i don't want to suddenly at 3 months use one)

currently we are

7am
10am
1pm
4pm
7pm
NW 1.45ish
NW 4.30ish

but as her activity time is only 1hr, how could i implement 4hr - is it too early for 4hr feed?  would that improve NW?

[Vicku]

Hi!

I'm not an expert on this but I think it sounds quite normal for a 3 mo to wake twice during the night for a feed on that routine. Especially as you're not doing a df. Going from 7:00 to 1:45 sounds very good to me at that age, and normally they only do one long stretch in 24 hrs. It is possible that if you did a df around 11 she'd make it til the morning, so that could be one option to try.

I don't know about if it could change things going onto a 3.5/4 hr EASY, so I'll leave that for someone else to answer.
Also seems like if you've not had a dummy before you shouldn't ned to introduce one now just for the sake of weaning off a NW, but it depends on what you want.

Can sympathise on not wanting to wake a sleeping toddler!

Bye for now!

[kellyanne]

Hey there, I just thought I would put in my two bits.  My little guy is 14 weeks old and we have basically the same routine as you.  We were down to one night feed (from 8pm to 2am and then not again until 6 or 7 am) and then he hit a GS for about a week.  Then then went back down to one feed but started waking up at anywhere between 4 and 5am.  I knew he wasn't hungry because he had only eaten about 2 hours beforehand.  So I used shh/pat and a paci to get him back to sleep.  Also I changed my swaddle blanket so that it was a tighter one that he couldn't get out of.  This morning he slept right through to 6am.
You could possibly try to stretch out the 4am feed but sometiimes I think it is just as wise to feed them so they will sleep longer. (i.e., My little guy I want ideally sleeping until 7-7:30 but he keeps waking at 6)
We are also nowhere near a 4 hour easy and I am just going to follow his lead.  It took us forever just to get to a 3 hour easy.  Some feeds he'll go longer than 3 hours but not normally. 

Hope that helps a bit!

[Jen114]

Hi there ... i am far from an expert its prob good to get one of them to answer your question but i can tell you from my experience... I think you are doing fantastically and i do agree with Vicku that if you introduced a DF at around 11ish you little one would probably go through the night or have one night feed close to wake up time....... when my dd was 3 months old i would express milk at 10 in order to give her EBM DF as it is easier to pop in her mouth and she wouldnt wake up....

another thing once she went through the night for abut 4 days every time she woke up i gave her water instead of milk i heard this worked and it did the next day she wouldnt get up i dont know why but it did work lol........

Hope i was able to help

[Tobysmum]

I wish I could help but I am having exactly the same issues and have a toddler too.  He breastfeeds at about 7 and goes to bed pretty easily (sometimes with shh pat, sometimes don't need it).  I then breastfeed him between 10-11pm when we go to bed to do the dreamfeed (which he usually wakes for but is asleep by the end of the feeding and goes straight down).  He wakes up maybe at 2.30 and 4.30 or 5.00 or thereabouts.  Last night he woke at 1, 3, 5 and 7.15!! 
Any suggestions on this would be great - seems like dreamfeed isn't working at getting him to sleep longer.

[RebeccaMo2]

I have just about the exact same schedule as the original post.  My dd is 15 weeks now.  I had gotten her down to basically one NW (6 hours stretch!) with a great 3 hour EASY.  Then last week I tried to move to a 4 hour EASY and she is up 2-3 times each night.  I'm moving her back to 3 hour today, hopefully.  I don't generally df as she is VERY difficult to wake or rouse enough to get her latched on.  I wonder if a EBM bottle would work better?  She is also big, off the charts for height and weight which is why I thought she should be moved to a 4 hour schedule. 
Of course, she is also much more curious these days and its difficult to keep her focused on nursing when she should during the day, which may be why she's eating so much in the middle of the night!
Thanks!
Rebecca