Is this habitual waking, or a need to feed?

[Tammy: Ethan & Kaden's Mom]

Ds has been a pretty good night sleeper.  He is ff at 7 pm, then bath, then story, then bed.  He is in bed asleep by 8 pm.  I do a df at 10 pm, which he usually takes all of his bottle.

My question is, he usually wakes up anywhere between 4 and 5:30 am crying.  I have been feeding him at that time, and he will usually take most, if not all, of the bottle. 

So, I guess my question is, does this sound like habitual waking, or does it sound like hunger?

Ds just started cereal about 2 weeks ago, and doesn't take enough to really matter at this point.  He's figuring out the spoon thing!   :wink:   Otherwise, he gets about 30 ozs of formula a day (including the df).

What do you think?!?

[heather10]

Tammy,

My question is, he usually wakes up anywhere between 4 and 5:30 am crying. I have been feeding him at that time, and he will usually take most, if not all, of the bottle.

If he is waking in such a large window (anywhere from 4-5:30) and is taking his feed, he is waking from hunger.  Hunger wakes babies erratically not at a predictable time.  My son, for example, has woken at 2:45 am sharp the last 4 nights and I think this is habitual.

According to Tracy, any time a baby wakes two or more nights at the exact same time, it is likely a habit instead of hunger, and then you use her "wake to sleep" strategy.  In my case, I have a 2 month old who still justifiably needs to eat at night once, so it makes no sense for me to wake at 1:30 to prevent him waking at 2:30 just to be woken at 3:30...

[rachelle]

sounds like it's probably hunger to me, or maybe just a waking not for hunger.  Make sure you give him a chance to resettle, and wait until he is truly crying (not talking or fussing), so that you don't enforce his waking.

HTH

[dkjokisch]

We're having the same problem.  Dd used to sleep 12 hours at night, but she is now waking between 3:30am and 6am (she goes to bed at 7:30pm).  We have tried letting her resettle on her own, and my husband has tried calming her, but ultimately the only thing that calms her is a feed (she is exc bf).  I have tried upping her intake during the day, but since she is exc bf, it's hard to tell if she's getting any more than usual.  She is a slow eater, and I let her feed as long as she likes.  What to do?

Other salient facts... We have started her on rice cereal, but she only gets about 1TBS twice a day.  We're still working on the whole spoon thing.  I have also tried to up my water intake and am pumping in between feeds when possible to stimulate my supply.  She eats five times a day (every three hours) with no df.

[Diego's Mama]

I suspect once you have solids firmly established you may be able to wean off that nightfeed.

You could try slowly decreasing the number of ounces in that night bottle by two a night, waiting a few days between the next decrease and adding them to the daytime.  Or just give an extra bottle during the day when he normally wouldn't have one.

You're likely to still have the waking, try pu/pd to resettle (that's fun in the middle of the night when you're dying to get back to bed.     )