Dropping Night Time Bottle

[Suzyrocker]

Hi,

I am very confused by my little one.  She was a 9 pound baby at birth and first slept through to 5am whilst I was bf at 9 weeks.  She is now 16 weeks and weighs 7KG she is on a 4(ish) hour EASY, however, short day times naps sometimes make things go a little awry.  I swapped to bottle feed about 4 weeks ago as she was not happy with mix feeding and I wanted to share the load a bit.  As she has slept so well 'right through' from early on, I was expecting the change to formula might mean that we got through to 6 or 7am.  Which for 3 out of 7 nights that wasn't an unusual occurrence.  However, on the mornings that she wakes up earlier around 5am/5.30am I only give her 3ounces of milk and she will then go back to sleep without issue, not unsurprisingly though, she will not drink all of her morning feed.  Over the last week though, she has started waking up even earlier between 3 and 4 am.  The first time she did this I left her for five minutes she went back to sleep, woke up at 5.30am, I gave her a dummy and she slept until 6.30am.  The second morning she woke up at 3.30am and wouldn't settle, I gave her 3 ounces, she went back to sleep without issue until 5.30am, I gave her a dummy and she settle until 6am.  I thought potentially her sleep was being disturbed as she had only had 3 45 minute naps during the day.  So yesterday I extended her sleep she settled much easier than the previous day because she wasn't over tired, but again she awoke at 3am, fussed for 5minutes, woke at 3.30am and did not settle until I fed her 3ounces at 4am...Again she only drank 4 ounces of her morning feed.  I really believe that because of her weight, the fact that she feeds regularly throughout the day, bar less on the first feed of the day and she will go back to sleep after only 3 ounces she's ready to drop the feed, but now her sleep has regressed to earlier wakings and she won't settle without a feed I'm super confused.  She doesn't really use a dummy in the day and she doesn't go to sleep with a dummy, I have only started trying to introduce it to try and settle her at night.

Yesterday schedule

6.30am - Awake

7.00am - feed 3oz

8.20am - Sleep

9.05am - Awake

(extended nap by taking her for a walk in her pram) slept until 9.40am

9.40am Awake

11.00am - Feed 7oz


11.30am - sleep

13.50pm -awake

14.50pm -  feed

15.40pm - sleep

17.00pm - awake

18.00pm - bath

18.15pm - feed 70z

6.30pm - sleep

10.30pm - dreamfeed 7oz

3am -wake

3.05am - sleep

3.30am wake

4am feed 3oz

7am - wake feed 4oz

Help please

[*Kara*]

Is she draining the 7 oz bottles during the day?  If she is emptying them, increase them to 8 ozs each and see if the few extra ounces will get her through the night.

That said, there is a massive growth spurt at 4 months so she could be just starting to hit that and this is why she wakes a bit earlier in the night.

A few things to keep in mind -

* she is too young to actively night wean (most babies are not ready for mom to intervene until solids are going well ~ 6-7 months) and are often consistently sleeping until 5am before waking to eat. Waking before this means they should be fed (generally).
* if she won't settle without a bit of a feed, she is hungry.  It does make it tough when they won't take a full feed at wakeup but it is quite likely that she just cannot get through the night yet without a bit of a feed, even if she doesn't take a big feed when she wakes.
* the "bigger babies will sleep longer" thing is a total myth.  They need more to support their growth than a small baby does and are often in need of a NF for longer than their smaller counterparts.

Hope this helps...