Habitual night waking

[hilis_mom]

DS is almost 4 months old and used to WU once at night (usually at 3AM). In the past week he started WU at 23:30, 1:30 and 5:30. At 23:30 he's not hungry (instead of BF I suggest the bottle and he wouldn't feed) at 1:30 and 5:30 I feed him.
Shouldn't it get better as he gets older and gains weight?? Any suggestions on how to avoid this habitual 23:30 WU (and hopefully push back the 1:30 to at least 3:00). We don't DF as he WU in the middle of the night no matter what. He always falls asleep on his own for both night and naps and he's a great napper. His only prop is the swaddle..

His sort of routine is as follows:
5:30 WU E then S
7/8 WU (assuming 7:30) not hungry
8:15 E
8;45 -10:45 S
11:00 E
12:15 - 13:45 S
14:00 E
15:15 S (45 + minutes)
17:00 E
18/19 Bed time (depending on the length of his last nap).
before bedtime I BF a bit more
23:30 WU I tried pat/shush unsuccessfully (sometimes the mobile music helps or picking him up and checking his nappy) he wouldn't take a paci and if I give up and try to feed him he won't eat (so why the hell is he waking up?
1:30 WU E goes right back to sleep
5:30 WU E goes right back to sleep

[becj86]

There's a massive growth spurt at 4 months, a lot of people find the previously one or zero night feeds goes back to 2 or 3 night feeds for a while and then wind back again.

For that 11:30 one - is there any noise around that time (you/DH/neighbours making noise going to bed or something)? If its a true habitual waking (on the dot of 11:30 every time), you can use wake to sleep... rouse him just enough to start a new sleep cycle at 10:30, do it every night for a week and see if that helps.

[Lindsay27]

We had an 11:30 habitual NW for a while about a month and a half ago and I used wake to sleep and had great success with it.  It worked out perfectly because I was usually going to bed around 10:30, so I would go in and rouse him and then go to bed myself.  It eliminated the 11:30pm NW and all we had was his usual NF around 2am.

Just thought I would share because it worked for us  

[hilis_mom]

Thanks! I'll try the W2S see how it goes..