Thinking of changing his FF routine to see if he sleeps longer at night

Hi all,

Currently my 8 week old son has 6 feeds in a 24 hour period. We will generally do feeds at around 6 am, 10 am, 2 pm, 6 pm, 10 pm and 2 am. He will have anywhere between 100 and 180 ml at each feed and we let him set the pace.

His sleeping during the night is reasonably good at this point. He generally takes about one hour to settle between 7 pm and 8 pm, wakes around 10 pm then again around 2 am.

He will always go straight back to sleep after the 10 pm feed so no problems there. We generally don't hear from him again until the 2 am feed. But it's that one that causes a few problems.

He has a very different pattern to his day sleeps than night. During the day he is not a great sleeper - generally only one 40 min block and then lots of effort to resettle. Napping after that until the next feed and lots of resettling.

After the 2 am feed, it's like he switches back to the day routine. He will generally need to be resettled at least 2-3 times before his 6 am feed. It's that part that is driving me a bit bonkers.

I'm wondering if I moved his feeds to every three hours during the day he is likely to drop that middle of the night feed? So his feeding schedule would be something like 6 am, 9 am, 12 noon, 3 pm, 6 pm and then introduce a dream feed around 10 pm.

Does anyone have any experience with this? How did that work for you?

Cheers,
Fiona

are you doing feeds at those times cause he is hungry or are you set into a pattern routine he must have a feed ???

Luke has been on 5 150-180ml feeds a day for about 3 weeks now, he dropped the middle of the night feed at around 2 1/3 mths, he now goes down at around 7pm wakes between 5-6am.. so he feeds like this

feed between 5-6am
sleep around 2hrs after getting up for 1-2 hrs
then feeds so can be up to 4hrs between that feed the next feed is sometimes 2-3hrs later then his big nap s 3 feeds in the AM....

he can sleep 3-4hrs if wanted sometimes less, he will feed when he wakes usually around 3-4pm then again a bit after 6pm he will feed so can be as little as 2 hrs between these feeds

HTH I am not against the must feed at 4hrs any earlier and bubs isn't hungry routine I just think hell I'm hungry sometimes a hr after dinner IYKWIM!!!!!!!!!

Fiona, it is so tiring in those early days with a new baby :hug:

Babies that young have very tiny tummies. Usually they have one period of longer sleep - eg 4 - 5 hours - at that age, and the rest of the time the feeds are closer together. This sounds like the pattern that your little one has atm. After his sleep from 10pm to 2am he doesn't want another longer sleep yet. This is very normal although obviously hard for you. Perhaps you could try walking him around in a sling for a little while to see if that helps him to settle more quickly? Or sometimes mums find a warm bath can work well.

In the meantime, it is important to look after yourself and rest when you can. If you have anyone who can look after him for a couple of hours during the day sometimes so you can get a nap, that might be helpful. Or at least rest while he has his 40min sleep. I wonder if you've tried co-sleeping to see if that helps him settle more quickly also?

Rach - Initially the 4 hours is what was recommended by the Maternal Nurse to try and get him to sleep longer. He was in a snacking / napping routine so was feeding every 2 hours and was continually grumpy. Now with the 4 hour feeds that is when he gets hungry. It's like he has a little clock and at 3 hours and 59 minutes he wakes and puts on the hungry face. However I'm not so fixed on the four hours that I ignore hungry signs. We went to Darwin recently and it was very hot, so he was feeding more often.

MantaRay - OK, now I get it. My little man is all normal!!! Sling - check (he's in it right now actually!) I don't co-sleep but don't hesitate in taking him into the spare room bed when he's hard to settle at night. Normally we both drop off pretty quickly. Full time co-sleeping is not an option for us however. I wouldn't say I'm particularly sleep deprived. I do have lots of support and get my sleep when needed.

I suspected that he will drop that middle of the night feed when he's ready. I'm happy to be guided by him.

My boy is pretty similar! He is 3.5 months and FF since 2 months (bottle fed EBM from 5 weeks to 8 weeks)

He goes down very easily at 7ish and then sleeps through beautifully until about 2 or 3 am. He goes straight back to sleep but often wakes hourly until about 5 am when he wants to get up for the day. I would love for his long sleep to be from 11 to 5 or something like that but he has just decided that his long sleep will be 7-2! I don't mind this most of the time but sometimes at 4 in the morning... I mind!

He has sort of fallen into his own feeding routine without any guidance from me- I was just demand feeding but he normally feeds 6am, 9am, 12, 3pm, 6pm, and 3am. He is never hungry in the morning and takes 40-50 mls first feed, then 100mls, then the rest of the day anywhere between 100 and 180.

He is a bit of a catnapper in the day too with usually 4 x 40 minute naps (no matter what I do!) and then once every few days he has an epic 2 hour nap in the afternoon.

I figure that he'll drop the night feed when he's ready and hopefully start to sleep better in the wee hours of the morning- but you have my sympathy! Do you use a dummy to settle him? I find if I don't use the dummy he sleeps better- but then sometimes he gets so agitated cos he wants it that witholding it is counterproductive, so I try and settle him without it, but then if I think he really wants it I give it to him. I would like to get rid of it but he won't nap at all in the day without it.

Good luck!!