Please help! Almost 5 month nw around 4

[Eleanorz]

To feed only at certain times, will that cause the baby to eat less? He may decide that half full is ok and then gradually reduce his appitite, will it be possible?

Today at the morning feed, he ate 150ml. Then he turned to eat his fist. Right before the nap, he had another 70ml. Should I not to give the 70ml before the nap? Then I am afraid he will not settle for nap, or if he does he would wake up earlier. Also, for these timed feeds shall I wait for his hunger sign before offering? Oftentimes he does not seem to be interested in eating after wake up rather he will play and eat his fingers and fist first.

Thanks

[Eleanorz]

An update of last night, it got better.

 Asleep at 9, Woke up a few times, 2between 9 and 10, 1 at 315, very easy to settle. Not sure if they are really wakeups, as he didnt even open the eyes. Fussed at 4, looking for fingers. I use woombie so he can't break it. He was trying to suck his fingers under the fabric then cried, I fed him at  440 and changed diaper. he took110ml and fell sleep relatively easily. Then slept till 8 when I woke him up.

Questions:

1. Since he only took110ml at his nf in the past two days, shall I work towards to drop the feed? The risk is he may not sleep well between that time and wake up time.  I feel he was more looking for fingers than milk. Also this may affect his daily milk consumption, if he decides not to add his nf to the df. He had 1000ml yesterday in total
including the 110 nf.

2. Shall I change diaper for the both df and nf? It did wake up him more when I changed at the nf this morning. Thoughts?

Thanks

 

[Bex09]

Hi there, if you think his diaper needs changing then yes change it. If it is soaked then chances are it will wake him anyway if you don't change it. I always used to change before the NF so that if it did wake DD up properly she would get sleepy again when feeding. Maybe you could leave it during the DF and just change at NF if he isn't too wet. Only you can make this call really.

As for dropping the NF, for now I would just work on trying to get him to take more in the day at the 4 hr mark. You could certainly offer less for the NFs and this will encourage him to take more in the morning when you start your day. But I would just tackle one issue at a time for now, just my opinion though.

Then as for feeding every 4 hrs reducing his appetite, believe me if he is hungry he will eat. He will get what he needs in 24 hrs but ATM he has that mixed up and is wanting to take good feeds at night because he is only snacking in the day.

[Eleanorz]

Thx Bex! Tonight my husband is taking the turn, so that I can take a break. I need it!

I will report how they do tomorrow.

[Eleanorz]

Here is last night.

Asleep at 850, fussed a few times between 9 and 10, had a df at 1125, woke up at 4 and had a feed, fussed at 6, and woke up for the day at 745. Not too bad considering what happened in the past.

Questions:

1. Yesterday he had a catnap between 1807 and 1838. What time shall I put him in bed and aim to sleep? 2 hours after 1838 or 1.5 hour? I put him in bed around 815 and he had a feed and slept at 850. Is it too late? Did it cause the wakings between 9 and 10? Ot? Yesterday His morning nap was 2 hours, afternoon nap was 1hour 45 min, in the morning he got up at 8.

2. He had 130ml in the 4am feed, but only had 70ml in his morning feed and cried for the morning nap. Now he is sleeping. Since he got up 15 min earlier today, did the tiredness cause the lost of appetite in the morning?

3. Right now I try to set the wu time as 8. But for sleep time, it varies and depends on when he finishes his last feed. Is this ok? Or shall I adjust the wu time according to the sleep time? If so, shall I aim for 12 hours sleep time or 11 hours? Right now if he is still sleeping at 8, I will wake him up. But if he happens to game up earlier, say 745, I will just let him start the day. Just wondered if I am doing ok this way.

Thank you again!

[Bex09]

Really you want to try to aim for a 12 hr day and a 12 hr night. This is the ideal though and not all LOs will do a 12 hr night. My DD always used to do 11 or 11.5 hrs, so our day was 13 or 12.5 hrs to make up for this. So if your DS is waking at 8am and usually does an 11 hr night then your BT would be 9pm, does that make sense?

Personally I used to find that a BT that late would make my DD OT though, so we used to WU at 7am so that BT was at 8pm at the latest. She much prefered a BT between 7 and 8pm and no later.

[Eleanorz]

Thanks Bex. I will try to push the bed time a little earlier. The chanllege is we will also need to move our dinner time eralier. These two days zac woke uo around 730, so really he is getting only 10 hour sleep considering the nw time. Hope moving bed time earlier will make him sleep longer.

Eating is still the same. It is a lot easier to feed him when he is sleepy. And he takes a big volume before bed time. When he is active, it is so much harder. He is mostly taking ebm, but since he is taking less I am thinking to switch to fomular, as It is thicker. Do you think it makes sense? Or I shall stick to bm?

Also, in case ot teething, do you recommend We do anything to relieve his uncomftness?

Thx again

[Bex09]

For teething we find that ibuprofen works better than paracetamol. So we would give a dose about 30 mins before BT with DD's last bottle when she was teething. Just bear in mind that teething can put a lot of LOs off their food and milk anyway, so this may be having an effect ATM.

As for swapping to formula, only you can decide that really hun. There is no reason why you should need to swap to formula or why it would work any better than EBM. Some people do say that formula fills babies up more, if you want to give it a go you could try it for his last bottle before bed and see.

[Eleanorz]

Thanks Bex. The day before yesterday was very promising. Zac slept from 9, did a df at 1130 and sleep till 550. I then fed him and he went back to sleep again till I woke him up at 8. But yesterday was not that great. Did a df at 1130, but had nws at 2 and 3, fed at 4, nw at 5, then sleep till I woke him up at 815.

May I ask a few more questions?

1. For df, should I aim to feed as much as the baby can take? Last night I didn't as I was afraid of waking him as it took a long time to drink the bottle. I guess this is why he had nw sound 2.

2. For the nf I give sound 4, should I also aim to feed as much as he can take or just enough to keep him asleep?

3. 50% of the time, baby is still sleeping at the wake up time. I will wake him up in this case, but shall I? I did try to get him sleep earlier, but he always finish his last bottle at 830 so he almost always fell asleep around 9, what to do?

4. Also for nap, shall I wake him when the nap time is due?

Thx a lot!

[Bex09]

Hi, yes I would let him take as much as he wants for the DF as this will hopefully fill him up for the night. If he is asleep when taking it I doubt the amount he takes will wake him up during the feed. As for the 4am NF you could limit this as this will then encourage DS to take his morning feed when he wakes and feed more in the day.

As for advice on waking him from naps and in the morning I would need to see your EASY as it stands now to see what is best. Can you post it with E,A and S times and length of naps, etc please? We used to have a set wu time and found that worked best to set DD's body clock. Lets look at your EASY and see hey?

[Eleanorz]

Hi,Bex,

This is the easy I try to implement and what really happened yesterday is in the brackets.

WU 8am (I woke him up at 815when he was still asleep)
E/A 8-10 am (815 -1022) *as I mentioned before it took him a long time to drink his bottle, he will eat, play then eat, etc.
S 10-12 (1022-1152)
E/A 12-2 (1153-205)
S 2-4 (206-344)
E/A 4-6 (345-615)
S 6-630 (615-645)
E/A 630-830 (645-845)
S between 830 and 9

As Zac is towards 5 month now, shall I increase the a time? If yes, shall I reduce the nap time to make up the time? Although I want him to sleep for 2 hours in both his morning and afternoon nap, but sometimes he will only sleep for one hour and a half. If he woke up within 1 hour, I will try to get him sleep to extend the nap, but if he had one hour and a half, then I don't bother. Is it ok? Also I am wondering what caused him to wake up sometimes at the 45 mark, ot? Ut?

I also want to tell you about last night. He drank 280before sleep and Drank 120 in the df, then he woke up around 245. Since he was awake, I fed him but he only took 70ml. He also fussed at 415 and 640, but I used pacifier and got him sleep again. And I woke
up him at 8. I guess he was nit hungry, but why he kept waking up? Adain ot? Ut?

Yesterday he drank 1110ml in total, that is a mix of ebm and fomular. Does this sou d right?

Thanks again.

[Eleanorz]

He just cried from his morning nap, I gave him the pacifier and he fell asleep. I am just worried that he is not learning sleep independently. Sometimes he can fall sleep without pacifier, sometimes he screams for it. Sometimes I think I gave the pacifier to him too soon to get him sleep. What to do? Also he wears woombie for sleep, so I won't be able to teach him to replug any time soon.

He does spit out the pacifier once he is ready to sleep though

[Bex09]

Hi, TBH I really think that your routine looks fine. The 1.5 hr naps are common at this age and your DS is getting enough sleep in the day so I would not worry. I do wonder if your last A time is a little long before BT after a 30 min CN, so maybe if you moved his BT 15 mins earlier that may help. As for the 45 min wu, again this can be an age thing and developmental. Eventually he should learn to transition through sleep cycles and sleep for longer, if you can extend then great. If naps are 1.5 hr I would not bother trying to extend them though as that is a decent nap time anyway.

I really do think that your NW issues are still down to these feeds. I notice that he is still 'snacking' in the day, so although he is taking a lot of milk over a 24 hr period he is getting so used to having it so regularly that he then wants this at night too yk? I really think that you need to try to get him to take as much of his bottle in one go for feeds in the day as you can and then wait it out as close to the four hr mark as you can to feed him again. If he is eating then playing, eating then playing his body is getting used to being constantly full, so he is bound to then get hungry when you expect him to go long stretches in the night.

From looking at his feeds in the night I think that you are right and he isn't actually that hungry, but I think again he is just wanting to snack by taking small amounts, as this is what he is used to.

So, how about if you try to hold of the daytime snacking and feed only every 4 hrs (or as close to as possible) in the day and then only feed at night if it has been at least 4 hrs since the last feed? I would use shush/pat to resettle at other times. What do you think?

As for the paci it may become a prop if you keep replugging to get him back to sleep, although at the moment if he is spitting it out before he falls asleep it isn't a prop yet. HTHs.

[Lolly]

I agree with Bex, the snacking is probably part of your problems at night. A 1.5 hour nap is fine too - it's 2 sleep cycles which is a restorative sleep.

What do you want to do? Are you going to try and push the feeds to 4 hours and stop the snacking? It will be tricky for the first few cycles as he isn't used to going long but a bottle feed should be finished within about 20 mins so you can start by stopping the feed by 20 mins finished or not and then hold him out for as long as you can before the next feed. See how long he lasts and if he takes at least as much as he did the first feed you can hold his next feed 10/15 mins longer the next time.

We have given you some suggestions so if you decide what your plan is going to be we can hold your hand while you carry it out! Hope you have a good night!

Laura

[Eleanorz]

Thanks both. I am trying implementing the 4-hour non- snacking feeds today and will report back.

Btw, last night was a disaster with many nws.  He had improved a lot In the past, but suddenly this. A sleepless night for me.