8 week old evening routine + evening fussiness

[Flowery1106]

Hi I'm new to this board!
I've been reading a lot of posts on BW forum recently and it's been a great help (thank you x3)
and decided to post on my DD's issue to get some advice!

Here's the background.
My DD is 8 weeks old. She's exclusively formula fed.
Formula: 90 - 120ml each feed
Wake time: Average 1 hr (min 30 min, max 1hr 15 min)
Sleep length: Around 17hr in total
Props used: Paci when needed. Also I hold her if she wakes more than 3 times during day naps and during witching hours (7pm - 11pm)
Medical issue: N/a
EASY routine: 3 hourly so it's E. 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, cluster feed 6pm, 8pm, 11.30pm.
Bedtime routine: I don't do anything different to ones that I do for naps. After her feed, I change her diaper and her sleepsuit followed by some more quieter time and little chat, swaddling, 5 min sitting time with music in the background, lay her down in the bed.

My DD's been on EASY routine since day 3 and she's been sleeping through the night since week 7!
Yay, so why do I complain..

Well For the past 3 days, there were a couple of night wakings around 2am and 4-5am.
Also I still find it difficult to organize the evening routine. It's pretty irregular and seems like a mess.
I aim to cluster feed her 2hourly from 4pm to 10pm but end up following her cues and feed her about every hour or an hour and a half as she gets really FUSSY!

Here are two questions:
1. She's 8 weeks old now. Should I stop cluster feeding her? If so, how should I go about it?
2. When she wakes at around 2 am and 4-5 am, should I feed her? (I give her paci first and if she's still fussy then I give her feed)
3. She's really fussy in the evening between 7pm -11pm. Is there anything I can do to help her not getting fussy? Does it get any better?? If so, at around what age???

Thanks for reading!

 

[Haribo2012]

Hi and welcome 
8 weeks is still very young so I'd still be expecting night feeds and would just go straight for feed rather than trying dummy first. They have lots of growth spurts at this age so feeding gets you through those spurts quicker.
Most LO have a night feed well into 5 months, my DS was formula fed and didn't go from 10.30pm - 5am till around 5 months.

Cluster feed didn't work for my LO but I used to DF at 10.30pm then expect a night feed, so if you want to stop cluster feed I'd just go for 4pm then 7pm feed for evening then expect a feed around 10pm?! Does your LO have a bath in the evening?

It does get better I think if memory serves me right 10-12 weeks was a bit of a turning point as the witching hour unsettled phase passed. x

[Flowery1106]

Hi Haribo2012
Thank you so much for the advice!
It's such a relief to hear that the witching hour will go away sometime because it feels like forever.

I think cluster feeding didn't work for my LO either, she didn't take as much as she did with the 3 hour routine.
She took more formula with 3 hour routine and didn't wake for a night feed!!

I found that she's less fussy with the 3 hour routine (than the cluster feeding routine).
The problem (a little one) is though she's so wakeful in the evening.
I assume there must be something wrong with the routine.
Maybe I should increase her wake time without making her OS/OT. But that's HARD.
How do you guys make the wake time longer without OS/OT your LO?
 
No, my LO doesn't take bath in the evening.
Should I do something different for the bedtime routine in the evening??
Will it cause problem later on when she's more conscious?

x

[*Liz*]

Hiya. I have a 7 week old DS, and it sounds like you are doing GREAT  . My DS cat naps a lot in the day now, and so doesn't tend to have wakeful evenings, but he still feeds every 3 hrs all the way through the night.

My evenings feel very messy as well (partly as babies are not predictable at this age, and also partly because I have 2 other kids to try to read stories with and get to bed on time).

I don't cluster feed - it just gives my man too much wind etc.

I remember my DD having very fussy evenings.... It peaked at 8 weeks and then slowly went way by 12 weeks.

[Haribo2012]

HI hun
Like Liz says your doing great and they are unpredicatble at this age.

Id stick with the 3 hour routine if its giving you the least fussines. I did introduce a bath in the evening around this age, it helped  calm him sometimes, and I used to put a nice warm flannel on his tummy in case he was suffering with wind, if he was really unsettled I would get in too and let him lay on me to calm down. At 31 months old he still has an evening bath and loves it.

x