Hi Ren,

What your MIL said rings true for me as that is what my DS did, he dropped his nighttime feeds one by one, and yes you will wake up surprised that he skipped a feed!As babies get a bit older they start to have one long stretch of sleep somewhere in the 24 hr period. Basically they will sleep through a feed. So if you were feeding 4 hrly that would be 8 hrs of straight sleep.

At 6 weeks old Lucas was feeding 3 hourly, and he started having a long stretch of sleep from 7pm-1am (6 hrs). He used to fall asleep in this little snuggle bed carrier thing in the loungeroom at 7pm, and we would pop him straight into his cot, still asleep in it, when we went to bed, and he would sleep through to 1am.

We were co-sleeping but my DF who has epilepsy needs to have a good sleep to avoid having seizures (so we soon found out) and when DS was 6 weeks old (after camping out in the loungeroom for 2 weeks) I finally relented and put him in his cot in his own room.

Feeding and sleeping during the night before that was a bit more sporatic as he'd wake/stir and I'd feed him but not know what time it was, or how long it had been. But after he started sleeping in his own room I would then get up and feed him regularly every night at 1am, 3am and 5am.

Then, much to my surprise, he dropped the 1am feed first, then the 3am, and then the 5am feed last, and by the time he was 14 weeks old he was sleeping through. We didnt have a routine but with a baby feeding 3-4 hourly you tend to do the same thing at the same time of day like clockwork anyway, and when/if the baby is ready they will drop a feed and sleep for longer.