Should I let him continue to sleep???!!

I'm sure he'll probably wake up the second I hit 'submit', but right now Seth's been sleeping for close to 6 hours. Normally he is fed every 4 hours at the most according to the instructions I received in hospital, and I've never had to wake him up to feed him before as he always woke up on his own.

Our first rooming-in night in hospital I let him sleep 5 hours (not purposely but still my fault) and the Nurse lectured me about dehydration so I've been vigilant since then. Tuesday night Seth's father didn't burp him after feeding him and so he was up all night miserable with gas which continued into late last night. Instead of having big feeds every 3-4hrs, he was instead having smaller ones every 1-2 and his final feed was a smallish one at 4.30am.

It's now 10.45 and I'm semi-flipping out. I don't want to wake him if his little mind and body are just trying to catch up on rest from having a hellish time with no sleep the night before, but I don't want to risk dehydrating him either. I just went in his room to check on him and I could hardly tell he was breathing at first, he's in such a deep sleep, so please excuse this post if it's choppy - still trying to calm down as I honestly had started to dial 000 before he finally made an audible noise.

Do I wake him? Is it normal for babies to change their feeding/eating patterns after having a rough night? Am I risking causing him any bigger issues by allowing him to rest?

Argh...I know nothing. FWIW he's 7wks+2 days old, with a corrected age of 1 day if that makes any difference. (For those not up with the prem lingo that means he was born 7wks and 2 days ago but was due yesterday). Not sure if his age or prematurity makes a difference??

Thanks if you made it through this -

Shari xo

How much does he weigh now as that is also a factor in how long he should go?

That must have been scary BR :hug: - I was always holding my finger underneath DD's tiny nose to see if I could feel breath as she was such a quiet, still sleeper sometimes too.

My bub was FT but LBW - the hossy told me that because she was so small she was so sleepy (which she was) and some babies are too small or weak to wake themselves when they need a feed - so I was told not let her sleep more than 5 hours at night or 3 hours through the day until she was over 3kgs then I could demand feed. I would follow the hossy's instructions esp if you are breast feeding - if he's bottle feeding I think it's more dependant on the total they take in a day so if he makes up for it when he does wake it might be ok - but you'd have to check with them first.

HUGS BR - can you call the hospital? I know that you have had a hard time with some of the hossy staff - maybe call the MCHN line - they are wonderfull or maybe nurse on call??

Hope it all works for you!!

You can always wake Seth and give him a "dream" feed and then hope he keeps sleeping after??

Kate

I would wake him up - he's had a pretty decent stretch of sleep and because he is still so small and really still only acting like a newborn (in theory) he should be feeding more often. try changing him and tickling his feet a bit to make him more wakeful and see if you can get him to even have a small feed. But don't worry - you haven't done anything wrong at all by letting him sleep.

I'd wake him. If he is really tired and just catching up on sleep he should go back to sleep fairly quickly. If he's still quite little (which I'm assuming he is) then it may be that he's so worn out that he can't wake himself... The extra time is obviously stressing you, so definitely wake and feed. We did with Sam for quite a while after he was released from hospital.

BW

How did you go? did he wake when you hit submit ;)

:hug: it's hard isn't especially when it has been drummed into us that you should never wake a sleeping baby :lol: and that babies 'sleep' through implying that they can sleep for 10 - 12 hr strecthes.

I would be waking him and as he is still so little keeping to feeding him at least every 4 hrs at night and more often through the day if he wants it. This way you are helping him to recognise the difference of night and day :crossfingers: in theory anyway

My DS was FT also loss birth weight (I think that's what LBW means) but was a frequent feeder of every 2/3 hrs 24/7. I am always a little concerned when people are feeding 4hrly... for some bubs this is perfect but my little man's stomach wasn't big enough to last that long - hope that makes sense.

Sorry I disappeared.

Sure enough, he woke about 5 minutes after I posted this thread but I'm glad to hear all of your experiences as I was this close to calling an ambulance about two hours ago as he did it again. The Hospital in the Home nurses tried to get me to feed him 4hrly, 100-120mls because they saw him hoover that back one time. In reality he's more of a 3hr feeder, 60-80 mls which is still way more than he needs to be consuming in a day so at least I know he's eating enough.

So much stress - especially when most literature is geared to full-term babies. It's enough to make you doubt every single judgment call you have to make to the point where you just end up paralysed.

Just going on corrected age - even a full termer is recommended not to let go more than about 5hrs. A sleepy baby at this stage isn't necessarily a good thing (as much as we all want that sleep! haha) so yeah, I would wake at about 5 hrs to keep those feeds up. And I'd only allow 1 stretch like that a day too for a while yet.

Hooray for reaching your due date! I remember DD behaving like a newborn for soooo long, it was so lovely to have her finally approaching corrected 6 weeks and being more awake and actually start to smile and stuff!