Remove habit of night feed without pacifier

[snowblind]

Hi everyone.

My son is 4 months old. He usually goes to sleep around 11 pm, after the last breastfeed and wakes up for good around 7.30 am.
He wakes one time during the night somewhere between 4 and 5 in the morning. I am pretty sure that it's just an habit and not an hunger matter, because he only eats for 5 minutes or less, and then is able to fall asleep on his own even if I put him in the crib while his eyes are still open. Moreover, during the Christmas holidays I was in another city by my parents, and during that period he slept the whole night through from 11.30pm till 7.30am without interruptions.

Now, my question is: how can I eliminate the habit of waking up at 4/5 of the morning, considering that my son doesn't want the pacifier. Tracy advice generally is to reduce the amount of food of the night snack, then to replace it with a pacifier, until the baby won't feel the need to wake up at all. I've done the first half, but I don't know how to proceed without a pacifier. I've tried to do the kind of stuff than generally calms him when he has to go to sleep (block his arms, shhhh) but he gets angry instead. 

[creations]

Hi there
To be honest I would expect a 4 month old to need a night feed.
Does he really stay up until 11pm?  I know we have some different cultures in our community with some having a later BT than others but I am not sure I've seen 11pm before.  It's a very short night.

[Karole]

The same happens here, but my baby wakes up at 2am for her feed (which I'm not quite sure she still needs that feed. She's 4 months too), and after I started dream feeding her (she's breastfed) she almost always wakes up because I find it VERY difficult to breastfeed her without waking her up, and now she's got the habbit of waking up between 10:30pm and 11pm by herself...! I'm trying "wake to sleep" but I never know if I'm being "gentle" enough to wake her just a little, and sometimes she really wakes up, and it's a mess, or I was TOO gentle and she didn't wake up a bit,
 and she still wakes up 1 hour after!! I would really love to try another method, and would like to know if P.U./P.D. works in theses 2 cases.

[Katet]

TBH your baby is actually working on dropping it themselves by taking a shorter one.

When you were away, what were the sleeping arrangements? Were you in the same room? Are you in different rooms at home?
It's normal to have light sleep in the night and if say when you were away your baby could have sensed you were thee and settled back to sleep, but at home needs to have that check you are there.

Also maybe you have the room warmer at home and he needs that little bit of fluid intake, or Maybe if you BF you were more relaxed or eat differently and that impacted your milk.

At around 4 mo 'sleeping through the night'is considered 5-6 hours, so what your baby is doing is within normal and I'd probably say he will work it out with a bit of time... also try and up the stimulation and sunlight in the day... that always helped my two to sleep longer, more looking at trees at the window in the day.

[creations]

It's absolutely normal for a BF baby to need these night feeds.

Karole - welcome to BW forums
I would not recommend using PUPD with a 4 month old to cut night feeds. At this age his tummy is very small and he needs to feed in the night. It could also effect your supply.  Some of the information in the BW book regarding breast feeding is out dated. Sadly Tracy Hogg is no longer with us but we believe she would have altered her approach and guidance based on the most recent information available There were other aspects of her methods she changed in light of further research and information.  When LO wakes before the DF you can try to change the time of the DF to catch LO in a different phase of sleep, this could help. Or you could accept that he just wakes for the feed, my DS always woke for his "DF" and I just fed him awake then put him back to bed.