What is going on?!

[*Ali*]

Ah poor sausage

[jessmum46]

I wonder if I can pick your brains again/just bounce some thoughts around?

We now have two teeth, no sign of any others.  Bit of a cold but otherwise well.  But we still have a lot of waking . I'm not convinced it's routine-related as he actually naps pretty well and doesn't seem to be OT/UT going to bed.  I don't think the extra feeds are a prop in the true sense but they do seem to have become a bit of a habit.  I'm trying to stretch his feeds a little in the day and we are managing about a 3.5h EASY feeds wise, occasionally he does 4h where there's a long nap. 

So.....what would you do?

Last two nights:
Mon: BT feed 6pm, NF 23.40 (6 mins, woke him for other side, 2 mins only), NF 03.05 (5 mins each side, woke him in between), woke again 5/5.30amish rolling about and chatting, got very vocal around 6.10am so offered another feed - not hungry at all but went back to sleep after one or two sucks, up for the day at 7am and again not really interested in feed.

Tues: BT feed 6.40pm, NF 23.30 (5&3 mins), woke just after 2am and managed to resettle him without a feed by 2.50am, woke 5am so offered feed (6-7mins), seemed dozy but then back in cot spent the next hour or more intermittently rolling, chatting, sucking his thumb etc before eventually dozing off around 6/6.15am, up for day at 7am.  Not really hungry when he woke again.

I am more than happy to feed once or twice overnight if he needs it, not expecting an EBF baby to do a 12h night undisturbed by any means!  But it kind of feels like he doesn't really need as much as he's having if you know what I mean?  None of the night feeds are really "good" "I'm starving" kind of feeds.

If I was suggesting to someone else what to do I'd say feed if it had been more than 3.5-4h since the last one, otherwise resettle, but that's pretty much what we're doing and it feels like too much yk?  I kind of feel like we need to get rid of one and just get back to one decent feed somewhere.  Is that reasonable?  Or am I expecting too much? 

(Sorry for the ramble, between DS and DD I'm not getting more than 2h of sleep together at the moment!)

[Martini~]

Sorry Katherine to say that, but especially this early waking looks like UT/too much of day sleep to me. I guess that you could have two NW (or DF and one NW) if he is not happy to start a day at 5-6am. WDYT?

[jessmum46]

Noooooo!  And how do I sort that out if it is?  Sorry Marta I'll post over on the sleep boards somewhere when I get a chance, this isn't a BF question is it?

[*Ali*]

Is he actually crying when he wakes? I know you said he is vocal but I wonder if he might eventually fall back to sleep without a feed if you just left him to it. Does he respond to shh pat?

If he had the BT BF at 6pm on the Monday what time was he asleep for the night? Just wondering if he wasn't in fact ready to get up for the day at the 5.30wu if he had an early night.

Are you sure he isn't getting too much day sleep? It does sound UT if he is just rolling about in the cot for hours at night, especially if he is having less than 12hr days. Or is BT significantly after the BT feed?

Posted with Martiii and you.i think we are on the same chain of thought 

[jessmum46]

No he doesn't cry when he wakes, just rolls about, shouts, gets annoyed that he's stuck on his face etc   shh pat doesn't really suit him but last night at the 2am waking when he got really cross I just rubbed his back a little and shhhed when he was really loud, left him to it otherwise and he eventually went back off again.

The 6pm BT feed day he was asleep at about 6.25pm after a 5.45am start (up 6.30am) with a total of 4h10 day sleep plus 45 mins in cot time before getting up in the morning.  Yesterday was a 7-7 day with 4h25 total day sleep.  I guess I didn't think it was excessive bearing in mind a standard 4h EASY has 4h30-45 sleep?  But maybe it's too much for him? 

Off to post on the sleep boards.....sigh, you'd think I'd have got the hang of this by now!!!

[jessmum46]

It's here...Is this a routine thing?  Too much day sleep??

[Martini~]

I think from BF point of view, his feeds seem short. Maybe because he is sleepy or maybe he is not so hungry.

If it's him being so sleepy, probably you cannot do anything more than what you did so rousing him slightly. The other idea which I would have is try to resettle at 11pm/12am if possible w/o BF (as I said I always was trying, but it wasn't a big of a struggle) so he takes a decent both sided feed slightly later like 2-3am and than can go till 7am WU.

This might be a slightly controversial opinion as I know that many mothers here wouldn't recommend not feeding if 4h+ passed, but basically it's what I did as no NF as soon as possible was really important to me. Frank went down to 1 NF at 6wo (around 3-5am), but very often woke around 1-2am, but I just resettled. As I said it wasn't very difficult.
Now when he is older and I observe his sleep patterns at night, I know that he has a natural window for waking (if you can call it like that) around 1am and 4-5am. When he is OT, OS or ill he will wake around that time. So I guess that when he was waking around 1-2am he was already slightly hungry so if I had fed him around that time, he would probably take a feed but small and woke once again around 4-5am and take another small feed.

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

I disagree about length of feeds....some kids are just fast & efficient! DD1 was a 5 min feeder from birth.  Off to look at your new post Katherine.

[Martini~]

Btw, I can be totally wrong:) I am just throwing some ideas here - it is you to judge if it's possible!

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Sorry if I came across wrong Marti...early am here and in a rush with posting! Just wanted to add that bit before I completely forgot!

[goldmom]

Wanted to let you know that DS1 was a EBF baby (started 3 bottles of EBM during the day at 6 weeks, and went down to only 2 (4 hr EASY) at 16 weeks - the rest were BF'ed) and was only having 1 NF starting at 7 weeks (He was a small baby at 25th percentile though). At around 12 weeks he woke earlier than usual for a NF, and I didn't want to start feeding him twice, so DH resettled him to sleep (I couldn't even though I tried). I felt that once he was taking only 1 feed, I didn't want to start with 2 (not keeping GS in mind!). My theory was that if he was waking at a certain time at night, I fed at that time, and not at others - not calculating whether it was 3 or 4 hours from a previous feed, and for the most part, he wasn't waking at other times, except for the rare occasions. (At 5 months we moved his 1 am nf to 10 pm for a more reasonable time for me - it took DH about 10 days of resettling before he stopped waking at that usual time).

Not sure if that info will help you in deciding to resettle your LO at night. My other 2 didn't manage to go down to 1 nf until they were much older (even now DS2 is having 2 nf's and the occasional wanting to eat too early in the morning, at 6 instead of 7 - so your "problem" sounds like our normal  ).

[Martini~]

Heidi, no problem at all. Hope that our mutual effort will somehow help Katherine!