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Night times getting worse and worse :( Also in BIO

At one point Logan was going 6 - 7 hours at night. Last night he went 4 hours then 2 and a half!!!! And this is what most nights now seem to be like. He used to just wake up once in the night and he is now waking up twice!!



He is on hungry baby milk as I thought that might be the reason - it seemed to improve slightly when we first put him on it but now it has gone downhill again.



Any suggestions at all???

I am working on his daytime napping as wondering if t hat could be the problem - he only tends to ahve short cat naps throughout the day but alot of them - but I can't see how it is the problem as he is sleeping fine but he is waking up hungry - he goes off again fine after being fed.



Replies

  • Sorry forgot to say - he is 15 weeks.

  • I am going to suggest something and i know it doesnt fit in with official guidelines and some people may disagree!



    WOuld it help if you started trying lo on some baby rice or porridge??

    My lo was born in oct 09 and he was a very hungry baby and i remember having to introduce rice to him around jan so about same age as your lo now. It did improve his sleep aswell. I wanted to try and get him to 4 mths at least but i could just tell! This maybe worth a try if it a route you want to go down I understand some parents dont wish to feed untilo they 4 or even 6 months! x
  • What time does he go to bed at? Do you offer him a dreamfeed/late evening feed and if so would increasing the size of what you offer him help if it is hunger? He might just be going through a growth spurt or a hungry wee monster atm in which case I would personally just feed him and let him go back off to sleep (then you can have some lovely sleep with him!) - DD is 25 weeks and has gone through lots of different phases with this, sometimes needing a feed at night, or two, sometimes not wanting anything from 530pm one evening to 9am the next and I'm tearing my hair out!

    If you do think sleep is the cause then IMO it would be worth looking at napping and whether you can get him to go past one sleep cycle during his naps - when DD catnaps she is less rested afterwards which contributes to a build up of overtiredness during the day and then poorer sleep at night. You could try a top up feed before his naps to help him sleep longer? where does he nap, is there a pattern to it or is it fairly random?
  • To be honest lucyloo - it is something I have been toying with. I had already decided I wasn't going to wait until 6 months but I suppose I was just a bit frightened of the consequences of doing it a few weeks earlier than 17 weeks.



    Its not that I mind getting up to feed him at the moment but I am going bck to work at the end of Feb (can't afford any longer) and am not sure how i will cope if I am still having to get up twice in th night - before anyone sayas it i know that is a very selfish thing but staying at homw longer isn't an option.



  • Is he taking much at those feeds in the night and does he then take his morning feed ok? My DS did the same as yours around this time and i put it down to a growth spurt but when it continued and he was only taking 2-4oz at each night feed (on about 6-7oz in the day at that point i think) and then not being hungry for his morning milk i thought it may be down to the fact that he was using the feeds to get himself back to sleep. So i decided to see if i could settle him without a feed and realised i was able to do this realtively easily (i used PUPD-have you heard of it?). He was having a dream feed at this point so i would feed him then and try and settle him without feeding for the rest of the night ( i knew he was able to go this long as had done it several times before). After only 2 or 3nights of doing this he stopped waking so it was obvious he was using the feeding to get himself back to sleep once he had stirred in the night, not out of hunger. Once he learnt to get himself to sleep without a bottle he was more settled at night. He also started taking his morning milk well again. A couple of weeks later he also dropped the dream feed (i decided to not give it to him one night and feed him when he woke himself but he never did wake!!)

    There are lots of reasons why babies wake in the night and it's not always down to hunger. It can be developemental (when they're learning something new) or it can be habit. It's hard to decifer what the reason is and it's easy to assume it's hunger cos a feed usually settles them back off, but if you're not sure it's hunger there's no harm in trying something else-you're not going to starve your baby as obviously you'll feed him if he really needs it. And i'm not suggetsing you leave him to cry but just try other ways to get him back off to sleep.

    Hope you manage to sort it out soon, sleep deprivation is soooo not funny!

  • You have to do wshat is right for you and your baby that my opinion!

    Maybe if you tried it and lo liked it and it worked you would know this is possibly the right thing. My lo was wanting over 10 oz bottles too lol!!

    Also my son was rubbish at napping during the day at that age too, it common apparently and i tried everything (plus he just nosey) and from about 6 months his naps became better and now he does 2 hour naps!
  • Sorry didn't reply to you Tennison - you must have posted at same time as me so I didn't see it!!

    He always falls asleep by 8pm - so we set that as bedtime. He goes off without too much fuss, sometimes takes up to 20 minutes though depending on what we had done during the day.

    He is dreamfed at 10.30pm - have tried offering it later but it doesn't make much difference. He never finishes this bottle either.



    mammaj -During the day and at night he is taking between 7 and 8oz each bottle. Sometimes draining the bottle completely. I have heard of PUPD and have started doing this with Logan. Me and OH have both tried to do this at night but after about 30 minutes of trying we have given up and fed him.



    Do you think we need to try for longer? How long should it take?



    Another problem I think it could possibly be is that he is a very wet baby - his nappies need changing frequently. I also mentioned this to hv and she suggested it was because of the amount of milk he was taking (56oz a day. I change his nappy after each feed at night (he goes bac to sleep straight away and during the day we have to change it more often than that). However, his nappies are still very big and wet by next feed. Could this be waking him up? How can I possibly fix that??



    Sorry for very long reply lol.



    THanks for your replies ladies.



  • 56oz sounds like a very hungry wee baby! (Mind you I'm jealous cos my wee one has never taken more than 32 oz in a day in her life and she is 6 months old - more like 28 most days pre weaning and now less!) He is very young to be weaned though IMO, though you could discuss with your HV I guess. I don't think it's selfish to want your nights back before you go to work! I will too and if DD starts waking at night again when I go back I will struggle but I guess just have to manage, lol.

    If he's feeding during the night then still taking his morning feed no problem I'd be inclined to say it is hunger and he is maybe just not ready for the feed at 1030pm. However, we did find that reintroducing the offering of a feed at 1030pm when DD started waking up more at night, did teach her to move her 'core sleep' from 7pm to 3/4am to 11pm til 7am, which is much better for her and us as she gets a more settled sleep at the same time as everyone else.

    We do a mini version of our bedtime routine before DD's daytime naps and it helps her settle a lot better, she takes 45 mins in the morning and a couple of hours after lunch usually.
  • I spoke to HV she just said to go back to normal milk and continue until 6 months.

    Maybe that is the best thing - I just don't know lol!!!

  • Your lo certainly wants and needs a lot of milk hehe, my son was like this and when i said to my hv that had started weaning they were quite helpful but didnt need it!

    I know lots of friends that have gave there babies rice or even porrigde from around this time and this is what made me feel i was doing right thing.

    Again though it is your decison, some hv in some areas arent very helpful though imo! It certainly done my baby no harm being fed couple weeks early!! xx
  • Honestly I would just wait it out - even babies who have previously slept through start waking again every now and then during the night for various reasons but it's usually just a phase. It's sounds very much like a growth spurt

    You will be able to get by at work just fine, even supposing he is still getting up a couple of times by the time you have to go back - my lo fed every 1.5 hours for the first 13 weeks and now at 19 weeks still gets up anywhere between 3-5 times from 7pm to 7am - it's hard but you can get by.

    I doubt he's genuinely ready for weaning at this age and it's fairly unrealistic to expect him not to be waking at all at 15 weeks. Even fully weaned babies don't sleep through all the time.

    I don't know much about bottle feeding admittedly but if he's hungry can't you just give him extra bottles to see him through his growth spurt?
  • My HV mentioned to me that the hungry baby milk is the same as the 1st milk except it has more protein in it...the calorie content is the same in both..



    If your baby needs more calories then the 1st milk will be better as Logan will be able to take more feeds on in the day instead of being fuller on the hungry milk.....



    hope that makes sense !!!!!





    DLAM xxxxxx
  • hi snugglenush..



    so sorry just read my reply back to myself and it sounded very direct......sorry...It was just a suggestion....



    My ds also can demolish a 7oz bottle too.....I've only ever had him on the 1st milk....he doesn't do a 10pm feed and sleeps right through...not saying that my way is the correct way but it seems to work for us....



    DLAM xxx
  • lol DLAM don't worry you didn't sound direct.

    I'm jsut gonna see what happens.

    MrsC06 - don't worry I don't have unrealistic ideas that he is going to magically sleep through at this age - I was just hoping that he would go back to his waking once a night. I liked that routine lol!



    Thank you very much ladies for all your advice though!!

  • 4 months is a very common age for night waking to increase. It may be a growth spurt, it doesn't indicate a need for solids. Not only is his gut still not mature enough to cope with solids, studies have been done and shown that feeding solids/cereals at bed time/cereals in bottles of milk (shudder) actually don't help to decrease night waking.



    If he's waking hungry all you can do is feed him, I know it's tough, my DS woke 1-2 a night for feeds until 7.5 months and still doesn't sleep through every night at 9 months. Some babies just need food at night more than others. Might be worth looking at ways you can make the night feeds as easy and fuss free as possible, like part-filling a bottle with sterile cooled water and taking a small flask of boiling water upstairs with a sealed pot of premeasured powder, top up the bottle with the boiling and add powder to have his feed ready in seconds when he wakes. At least then you're not fannying around going up and down stairs to make bottles up.
  • Good idea about the bottles Maenad - thanks!

  • In reply to PUPD, it worked very quickly with my DS, never had to do it longer than 20mins which is what made me think it wasn't hunger but rather an inability to get back to sleep. That's not to say it's not normal for PUPD to take a lot longer but it's hard to continue if you're not convinced they're not hungry iyswim!

    My DS is a big boy (18lb at 18weeks when last weighed!) and everyone kept telling me i'd have to wean him early but he's 23weeks now and i will not be weaning till 6months. I've managed to keep him satisfied on milk (albeit now hungry baby milk!) and although i tried not feeding him at night to see how it would go (and found that he didn't really need feeding) if he had needed feeding then i would have done so. The amount recommended on the tin is only a recommendation and some babies just need more than others. Don't rush into weaning as i know many people have tried it as a solution to sleeping through only to find it made no difference. And as Maenad says, they're digestive system is not really mature enough to handle it at that age. He's your baby though and it's your decision.

    Don't feel guilty about wanting a better night's sleep, you're only human and i think there are only a minority of people who truly don't mind a broken night (i'm not one of those-i need my sleep!). It doesn't make you less of a mum and it's a fact we all function better with more sleep. Take heart that whatever you choose to do or whatever your baby chooses to do this phase will pass and sleep wont always be that ever distant memory!

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