Do you wake them to keep them eating on schedule?

[julesiew78]

Sorry for posting this if it's a dumb question--but my LO (4mos) has been asleep for 2hrs15min now, and we are on the 3hour EASY (or trying to--we've been doing thisfor like 5 or 6 days now).

Anyway, the 3hr mark for eating would have been 15min ago--do I wake him to feed him???

[clazzat]

Short answer - yes!  When you are trying to establish the routine, you have to do things like wake lo up to feed at the correct time, although once you are in the swing of things you can let things go once in a while if you need to.

The importance of getting them to eat on schedule is to make sure that they are taking enough calories during the day - if you let them sleep through a feed then they will have to make up for the lost food at some point, and that will most likely be during the night.
Cx

[Tamara]

Absolutely not IMHO.  Let him sleep and feed him when he wakes.

[Erin (redstarfalling)]

I think they're both sort of right!   If your lo is sick, or had a rough night or the previous nap was short or something, or even none of those things, then there's no harm in letting them sleep a little extra.  If it's A LOT longer than normal, then you do run the risk of messing things up with not eating too much during the day, possibly waking more often at night as a result, etc.

I would suggest looking at it from more of a "pattern" point of view.  A one-off is probably no big deal, but if this is happening consistently, then you might need to look more at what else is going on - for instance, should you be stretching out to a 3.5 routine or whatever...  HTH!

(And what ended up happening, BTW?)

[julesiew78]

I think they're both sort of right!   If your lo is sick, or had a rough night or the previous nap was short or something, or even none of those things, then there's no harm in letting them sleep a little extra.  If it's A LOT longer than normal, then you do run the risk of messing things up with not eating too much during the day, possibly waking more often at night as a result, etc.

I would suggest looking at it from more of a "pattern" point of view.  A one-off is probably no big deal, but if this is happening consistently, then you might need to look more at what else is going on - for instance, should you be stretching out to a 3.5 routine or whatever...  HTH!

(And what ended up happening, BTW?)

Cool--thank you so much!

He ended up sleeping til 4:45pm and I fed him shortly after that--so he ended up going almost 4 hours.  I still BF"d him at 7pm before bedtime, and also at 8pm so I think he got enough food.  Thanks again all of you for your responses!

[Tamara]

I agree, a 'pattern' is what you're looking for with plenty of room for flexibility, not clock-watching and a rigid schedule.  If you become too rigid, you'll end up getting very anxious about things when your baby doesn't 'conform' and sleep/eat when he's "supposed to".

Glad it worked out.