Ah, give me hope! Large 6 week old, with no long stretches!

[edowns88]

Hi everyone. I am hoping you all might be able to help me with my 6 week old that we are doing EASY with and have been doing so since birth. My son was 8 lbs 8 oz when born and is probably tipping the scales close to 11 lbs. right now. He is formula fed and currently eating 4 oz. every 3 hours until 9 pm and then typically I get one 4 hour stretch until his first night feeding. Here are a few things working against us, that maybe you all can provide solutions to.

1. We have a 17 month old...so rest for myself is pretty limited.
2. Our house is too small and this baby does not have his own room. he is currently sharing the master bedroom with us. We are moving in 2 weeks with my parents to their basement while we have a new home built. This is creating a nightmare in establishing a nighttime routine since my husband does the last feeding for me so I can get 2 to 3 hours of sleep without newborn noise. Afterward he brings baby back to our room in the rock n play. ( husband sleeps in guest bedroom downstairs) baby is in living room which is dark and quiet until switching back to my room.
3. Dream and cluster feeding is not happening. My husband cannot get my son to take a dream feed. Cluster feeding I am not sure of since he is eating so much already and has a tendency to spit up occasionally. Don't really understand how to implement this with formula.

Those are the issues. His wake times are typically about an hour, sometimes just over. I try to run a 6p to 6a schedule and things vary within an hour each way. My husband does the last feeding at 9pm (sometimes 10ish) which he typically wakes up for. Then he is usually up again by 1am at the latest, sometimes earlier. and of course at 3 or 4 am, then again at 6 or 7 am. Only reason for a 6p bedtime is to make meal time easier with my 17 month olds schedule and so I can take full advantage of his 1p to 3p nap time. Wondering if I should run a 9pm to 9 am schedule instead?
I am starting to feel like this is a hopeless situation and pretty soon we will all be in my parents 1 bedroom basement. ugh! Please help me if possible!
ETA: we swaddle, use pacifier and white noise. He is pretty good at falling asleep on his own and takes 4 1.5 to 2 hour naps during the day in my quiet bedroom.

[jessmum46]

Hi there

During the day when he has his bottles, do you offer 4oz and he drinks all of it, or are you offering more?  If he is draining his bottles I would add an extra oz to each one which might encourage him to take more calories in the daytime.  Overall though, although it's exhausting, I think you're actually doing really well!  At this young age you would expect LO to go as long at night between feeds as during the day ie 3 hours, and have one longer stretch.  If he's having one 4h stretch and the rest of his feeds are about 3h apart, he's actually right on target.  Over the next few weeks you would typically expect to see that longer stretch lengthening out.

You don't have to do a dream feed - we never did one here and for some babies it just doesn't work.  That said, have you tried slightly earlier or later than you are doing currently to see if you can catch him in a different part of the sleep cycle?  Cluster feeding is also optional and if he's spitting up already, feeding him more often isn't likely to help so I wouldn't worry about it. 

It sounds like a stressful situation for you all moving house - (((hugs))).   It's recommended that LO sleeps in the same room as parents for the first six months anyway from a SIDS risk point of view, but is your older LO going to have to share with you too?  I don't have a magic solution to that, other than to say it may end up being a case of doing what you need to do to cope, and then sorting out any prop issues once you have more space.  Not ideal, but you have to do what you can to maximise sleep for you all in a difficult situation.

[LovelyLilyandJack]

Just wanted to say that I'm in the same situation as you in that my 7 week old won't go longer than 3 hours at night either.  We did have two lovely long stretches of 6 hours between feeds once but since then he's feeding more often at night than he was before, if anything! I keep telling myself that he's still learning and will get it some time over the next few weeks but it's hard waiting - it feels like it's taking forever to get there!

So no solutions I'm afraid, but lots of empathy!

[edowns88]

Ha! I found this old post from my first son Re: How to drop the 1-2 am feed! I am desparate! . Apparently I am at the point where I am starting to wear thin. I get so jealous reading posts of others who have younger and smaller babies than mine who are sleeping through the night. Especially since I have worked so hard to be consistent from day 1 this time. Oh, and I am an idiot, my second son is only 5 weeks! (Did I mention sleep deprivation? Ha!)

So basically everything is repeating for me almost identical to son #1. And I need to just be patient..because at 8 or 9 weeks he magically slept through the night. I believe my pediatrician told me it's at 8 weeks when their circa rhythm or whatever it's called develops.

Tomight I set my alarm and attempted a dream feed at 12 am....and I dozed until 1230 or so when I finally did it. Unfortunately baby was starting to come out of his deep sleep, but took the feed no problems.  I chickened out and stopped at 2 oz or so..everything seemed good for a while and the the squirming started. By 120 he had his hungry cry and so I finished the bottle. We are dealing with some man sized gas...despite dr. Brown bottles and mylocon drops. Same as baby #1 and I remember that improving over the next few weeks too.

I did add an ounce to his last 3 daytime bottles too...no difference, so I will probably scale those back tomorrow. As for sleeping in my room, I know it's best, but I struggle sleeping through all the grunting and groaning myself. We have a video monitor that is awesome and I sleep much better using that.

At my parents I plan on sectioning off an area for a master bedroom and room for baby 2 with curtains. Baby 1 will get the actual bedroom at least at night. He sleeps 7 p to 7 a and I can't lose that.

Thanks for the help, support and suggestions! Greatly appreciated!

[jessmum46]

Just to mention the dream feed is usually done between 3-4h after BT - any later than that it might actually disturb LOs sleep more than it helps

[edowns88]

We did a 9 pm bed time last night, so that is why I did a 12 am dream feed. He really is appearing to be a flexible baby as I have no problems getting him down at anytime...hope I don't jinx myself by writing that. Hopefully he stays this way through out our multiple moves.

[jessmum46]

Fingers crossed for you!