Author Topic: 2.5 month old - sleep through the night?  (Read 1809 times)

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Offline polla

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2.5 month old - sleep through the night?
« on: December 09, 2013, 15:47:11 pm »
Hi,
I'm trying to teach my 2.5 month old to sleep through the night. He used to sleep from 8 pm to 2am, then next wakeup at 6am. Now I started to give him a dream feed at 11pm, and it doesn't seem to change anything. He usually eats about ten minutes at dream feed and about 20-25 minutes next times.
I've been doing it for 4-5 days. Should I continue, or just hope that he'll learn to sleep when he gets older?
Thanks

Offline jessmum46

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Re: 2.5 month old - sleep through the night?
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2013, 15:54:32 pm »
It kind of depends what you mean by sleep through the night.  At this age an unbroken stretch of 5h is considered sleeping through which your LO was easily doing from 8pm to 2am.  To expect a (breastfed?) baby to sleep all night at this age with no feed is not really fair, their tummies are small and designed for frequent feedings so two or even three night feedings in a 12h night is totally normal. 

You have a few options with the dreamfeed - don't bother with it at all (we never did), keep persisting at the current time to see if LO will start to take a better feed, or try 15-30 mins earlier or later to see if you can catch him in a lighter part of his sleep cycle.  Normally the DF should be between 10-11pm based on a 7pm BT.  So if BT is 8pm your DF may need to be more like 11pm-midnight.

Ultimately though he'll sleep through when he's ready to :). Good luck x


Offline polla

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Re: 2.5 month old - sleep through the night?
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2013, 17:59:27 pm »
Thank you, Katherine. I hoped he would sleep 11pm to 5am. But probably that's unrealistic.
 He can start sleeping through the night only when he starts solid foods or formula?

Offline jessmum46

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Re: 2.5 month old - sleep through the night?
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2013, 19:07:18 pm »
No, there's no absolutes, all babies are completely different.  My DD was breastfed and actually did do a 9-10h stretch from very early on, around 8 weeks as far as I remember.  I was lucky!!!  Then from around the four month growth spurt she woke for a night feed at around 4-5am pretty much every day until she turned seven months.  At that point she was on solids and I'd just introduced protein - whether that made the difference I don't know.  But plenty of LOs here keep a night feed until closer to a year.  Tracy Hogg (the author of the BW books) certainly didn't expect LOs to drop all feeds overnight completely until around 8 months old once firmly established on solids (this is the age she recommended weaning the dreamfeed).  But you may find if you give it a few more weeks and persist with the dreamfeed that you do get that 11-5 stretch - I think that's a good point to be aiming for ie a dreamfeed and one night feed :). But try not to stress if it doesn't happen immediately, it will eventually :)