i wanted to post a few relevant quotes from Tracey's sleep interview. you really need to read it to put this in perspective. Sorry these snipets are long too:
1. Q: So there are a lot of things changing in this age range (4-5 months).
T: Yes. And sometimes you’ll have something else that’s very common – “My baby has been sleeping through the night, and now she’s started waking again.” I guarantee that probably started at a growth spurt, and they didn’t recognize it, so they didn’t up the calories during the day.
And the other thing is, parents will say is “He’s four months old, and he’s started waking, and he’s drooling a lot – has he started teething?” No, he’s not teething, except in very rare cases, his saliva glands have just matured. Because drooling has nothing to do with teething.
2.Q: So if night wakings are starting again, and it’s clearly hunger, you would feed him that night, but the very next day start trying to increase the calories?
T: Yes, get the extra calories in wherever you can. Don’t even think about the clock. So if they get up at 7 and feed, you give them a couple more ounces at, say, 9. Whatever you fed them in the night you’ve got to make up the next day – let’s say he woke up at 2am and gulped down 8 ounces. Then you’ve got to get 8 extra ounces in the next day. It doesn’t mean in one bottle or feed. It may mean you’ve got to add an ounce to every bottle/feed they’re having in the day. Say they’re having 4 feeds/bottles, that’s an extra 4 ounces. Then, say after an hour that they’ve fed, you give them an ounce. And then another hour later, you give them another ounce. And then it’s not until about the third day that they’ll start to adjust during the day so they can take all the extra they need at regular feed times. But if they’ve been sleeping through the night, and suddenly they start waking, I could put money on it that it’s hunger, and it’s calories.
3. Q: So let’s take the example of a baby who wakes early from a nap happy. Sometimes they’ll wake early and are clearly still tired. Maybe something has interfered – he’s had a big poop, or is hungry earlier because he didn’t eat well the feed before, or something like that. So you’d work on getting him back to sleep, or if hungry feed and do the things we talked about earlier. But when they wake up happy, and they know how to self-soothe, I’m assuming there’s no real point to try to do the pu/pd.
T: Right! If they’re happy – the baby who wakes up happy has clearly, somewhere along the line, had a good nap. So leave him be. The point I would make here is, you don’t need to rush in just because their eyes are open and they’re babbling. Don’t break that – because if you start to break that, then they don’t learn to be in their own space. Then you have a child that soon learns that mum rushes in as soon as I make a sound. Well, in that case they don’t learn, they never get used to being on their own. So when mum does want them to be on their own, it’s so strange to them – because you’ve always rushed in – that they start to cry when they’re left. And those children have a hard time at the age where they go through separation anxiety. Because they’ve never been left, and they don’t know what it is to – I have a lot of babies who regularly wake between 4 and 5 in the morning, but go back to sleep. Leave them alone – if they’re fine, then leave them alone. Until they call you, they’ll do that fussy, coughing cry, e-heh, e-heh, e-heh, “where are you?” And when you come in, they’re happy, all smiley again. If they’ve been happy in their space, and then they start to cry, it’s because they want you. But if they’re babbling and cooing, and talking to their “friends” in the crib, leave them be!
4. Q: dreamfeeding....And sometimes will even be smiling, engaging you, so how to phase it out…say you have a 6 month old and are wondering how long to continue the dream feed.
T: You know what you do, you really don’t with breastfeeding start to phase that dream feed out until about 8 months. Because they’ll have another major growth spurt before then. The one thing you don’t do with dream feeding and breastfeeding is you don’t start feeding them again in the night. Because I guarantee they’ll start eating less in the day and start eating in the night if you let that get re-established.
Q: So why is it they like to go back to eating more in the night than in the day?
T: It’s more relaxing and they don’t have the distractions – the thing is, at this age, with all they can start to do now, they want to spend less time to eat, less time to sit and be still – that’s pretty boring! That’s why a lot of children will actually lose weight at this age.
Q: And that’s where you were saying earlier to just get the calories, don’t worry about the clock and the schedule, just get the calories in.
T: That’s right, just grab ‘em any time, and pop ‘em on the boob, as long as it’s in the day, when that sunshine is out, and not the moon penny!
5.Q: Now what about the other end – starting the dream feed? What about parents who say they’ve tried it, but it didn’t work?
T: Let’s say you’re feeding them at 7 or 8. And they’re waking up at 2 or 3. If you give them a dream feed – here are the two scenarios: One is if they take a big dream feed, and they still wake up at 2. Well, in that case, at least you know it’s not calories causing them to wake. The other scenario is if they won’t wake enough to feed. In that case, take it an hour later, so if you’re doing it at 10pm, then try it at 11pm.
Now if they’re always waking at 2am, then you’ll have to break it, and give it to them at 1am. Set your alarm for 1am, so you pre-empt it. Then bring it back to 12, then 11.
Q: Is it important, if you want to try the dream feed, to keep it up if you don’t see results right away?
T: Yes...And in that 3-6 month range, they should start to be physically asleep from 7 to 7, with a dream feed at around 10 or 11.
