Moving to 4 hour EASY - would it help night waking and feeding?

[ladymugg]

I see a couple of good threads already on this topic, so hope you don't mind that I start another.

Nearly 10w old son, exclusive formula fed... Has previously slept 6.30/7pm ish until 3.30am ish, but the last week or so has started waking for a feed at around 10.30pm. 

He's currently on a 3 hour EASY..  Is ravenously hungry by 3 hours, but sometimes won't finish a bottle like he had previously.

Used to (whatever the bottle fed version is of) cluster feed and take two bottles between say 4/4.30pm and bedtime 6.30pm, but now has a single bottle around 5pm that he might take an hour to finish or finishes off the last little bit after his shower.  So he's kept the same daily total volume of milk but has spaced it into the night.

I was thinking of moving him to 3.5hr EASY soon - do you think this might make his feeding a little more consistent ie: take bigger bottles less frequently and also mean he's had more feed in the daytime rather than nighttime?

My only concern is that level of hunger he seems to have and how I can stretch him out longer!  I know how to do it but not sure I'm looking forward to it so any tips other than distraction and/or dummy/paci would be amazing!  He's a very big baby, over 7kg (15-16lb), not chubby but long and robust.

current EASY is pretty textbook 3 hour EASY but with a bit of catnapping (usually at least one decent sleep of 2hrs+, maybe two, and if not then another hour to 1.15hr and a couple of catnaps).  Would love to see the catnapping settle into more consistent longer sleeps as we head towards 4hr EASY.

Any insights or advice greatly appreciated. 

[Lindsay27]

Tbh I'm not sure I would be moving toward a 4hr EASY quite yet.  That's normally something you see closer to 4 months and at 10 weeks I would think that 3hr feeds are probably necessary, especially if he is actually hungry at the 3hr mark.  It is important to remember also that he could be going through a growth spurt so while he used to be able to go from BT - 3am it is completely normal to have 2-3 feeds at night at this point.  If he is feeding at 5pm are you also feeding at BT?  Can you post your rough EASY so I can take a peek?

[ladymugg]

Hi Lindsay

Sorry its taken me a while to respond, crazy last day or so.

His EASY looks mostly like this:

6 am E
7.30 am S
8.30 am A
9.00 am E
10.15 am S
11.30 am A
12 pm E
12.45 pm S
2.45 pm A
3 pm E
4.15 pm S
5.30 pm A and E
6.30 pm BT and top up of bottle

He used to be able to go 6.30 pm until around 3 am without waking (for a good 3 weeks or more), and then about 2 weeks ago starting waking for a feed around 10.30/11 pm.  He still wakes at around 3/4 am for a feed after that new feed as well. 

The above is fairly consistent with what he does, although sometimes it is different (some sleeps are longer or shorter... sometimes he is ravenously hungry after 2.5 hours, even when I try to stretch him out longer... sometimes he sleeps past 3 hours and does 3.5 hours during the day).

I wondered if he was going through a growth spurt too, as after the first 4-5 days of waking at 10.30pm, he stopped for a couple of days... then started back up again.

I'm concerned he might have gotten himself into a habit of waking for that feed during that growth-spurt a couple of weeks ago?! 

When he feed around BT he used to have two bottles - first around 4.30 then another at BT around 6.15/6.30ish - he was kind of tanking/cluster feeding before the night time... he used to not have that last catnap though and he was super super gassy/windy so that kept him up instead of having that last catnap.

I wasn't thinking about moving him to 4 hours right now... more should I start moving him to 3.5 hours shortly to see if that makes a positive difference to that 10.30 pm wakeup?

I know we have it pretty good, two feeds in the night is pretty great for a 10 week old baby - but I am just confused about why we used to be able to go for like 9 hours in the night without a feed and now that's more like 4-6 hours.  When he was doing 9 hours I was even contemplating starting up a dream feed a little early for his age to take him through to his morning get up time - and now look what's happened!

[Lindsay27]

Adding an extra feed in at night is completely normal - there is a big growth spurt at 12 weeks so it's possible he could be hitting it a bit early.  At the 10:30pm feed is he taking a full feed?  Have you ever tried to resettle without feeding? If he's taking a full feed I would assume it is true hunger and just keep on with it as his last full feed was at 5:30pm so that's a 5hr stretch.  At 4 months my DD went from doing a 7pm-3/4am stretch to needing a feed at 1am and 5am, then after a few weeks everything settled back.

I'm really not sure that moving to a 3.5hr EASY is going to make a difference, especially if he gets hungry at the 2.5hr mark.  Are his feeds during the day full feeds or do you find he's snacking at all?