Hello fellow baby whisperers...
My daughter is 13 weeks old. For the last month and a half, she has woken up for one middle of the night feeding. She cried and I fed her, which was anywhere from 2am to 4am. Recently she stopped crying when she woke up. We continued to feed her because she was sucking on her fingers and acting restless. She would always fall back asleep after being fed, so it didn't take long to remedy the situation. Then I started wondering if we were doing accidental parenting? Since she didn't cry when she woke up, I decided to try not feeding her. She eventually put herself back to sleep after a little while. I did this for the last 4 nights. She seems to wake up around 4am-ish and go in and out of sleep until about 6:30 when we feel like we'd better get her up since she is giggling to herself, and obviously very awake.
I guess I'm wondering if I'm doing the right thing here? She stays in bed happy (although not always asleep) from about 9pm - 6:30am. That's great, but is her quality of sleep not as good now? Please advise.
Here is the info. usually requested to help inform your advice. Thank you.
Since she dropped a feeding, I increased her daytime feeds (she's bottle fed) to get it pretty close to the same amount of her total intake before.
Her example schedule: (varies daily)
6:35 (takes meds for reflux, need to have 1/2 hour before feed)
7:00 EAT
7:20 ACTIVITY
8:25 SLEEP (until 10:05, so 1 hr 40 min)
10:10 EAT
10:30 ACTIVITY
11:45 SLEEP (until 1:20, so 1 hr 35 min)
1:30 EAT
1:50 ACTIVITY
3:05 SLEEP (until 5:00, so 1 hr 55 min)
5:05 EAT
5:25 ACTIVITY
she won't catnap most days here...
7:30 meds
8:00 EAT (falls asleep at end of bottle)
in bed until wakes up around 4am, no crying, just fidgeting, sucking on fingers, etc. Goes back to sleep, wakes up again, fidgets, sucks fingers, etc. again.
She's been on EASY for about 2.5 weeks. She's now napping well consistently, except for the catnap which is hit or miss.
Thank you for any advice - I don't want to push her into sleeping through the night if she's not ready for it, but I also don't want to establish accidental parenting practices.