Night Sleep

Hi Everyone,
My son is 12 weeks old, is breastfed and is not sleeping through the night. I have no problem putting him to sleep but I only get a block of 4/5 hours initially and then he wakes anywhere from every 2 or 3 or 4 hours, just depends on the night. So, I usually get up once or twice a night, on the odd occassion 3 times.
In the last 12 weeks he has only had one night where he slept for 7 hours straight and what a great night that was.
I use the feed - play - sleep method during the day but he does need help getting to sleep during the day and then only sleeps 40mins. He is a happy baby and is gaining the right weight.
Any ideas? because I'd really like him to sleep through the night.

I had this problem as well, but now my son sleeps at least 8 hrs a night. Make the night feeds as quite as possible,don't talk or play with him, and only change the nappy if you really have to. This worked really well for us because now bubs understands night time is for sleeping, so as soon as it's dark he usually goes to sleep without to much trouble. We put him to bed around 8 then wake him up around 10:30 for his last feed and he sleeps until 7am.
Hope this helps you.

Thanks, it sounds similiar to what we did before this week. Night feeds have always been quiet, dim lights etc. We'd put him down around 7-8pm and at times we tried to dream feed (i.e. feeding him without waking him) him at approx 10-10.30 in the hope he'd sleep longer but it never worked.

What my husband and I are trying this week is to do the usual night time routine, minus the dream feed but instead of feeding him everytime he wakes, is resettle him and only give one feed a night. It seems to be working as we've found that the times he would wake were because he couldn't resettle himself and needed help. So when he's had approx 6/7 hours (I wouldn't wake him , it's when he wakes up) that's when I would feed him. Then I'd continue the same routine until 7am.

I'm just not sure if I should eventually drop that one feed or wait and let him decide to drop it. I'm assuming that once he learns to resettle himself he'll drop that feed and sleep through the night.

Help Me - my son is 9 weeks old and wakes every 3 hrs day and night for a feed. We have tried to make him wait an extra hr but he screams the living house down.My husband and I need more sleep.

Hi natarsha,
My son was the same. Sleep was something of a distant memory - still is at times and he's 3 months. All I could do was feed him when he wanted it and I'd put him into the routine of feed-play-sleep during the day. Also, now he's 3 months old we started sleep training him abut two weeks ago because we found that at night he was waking up because he couldn't resettle himself not because he was hungry (I was feeding him everytime he woke).
Night sleep has done a back flip this week with him not responding to the resettling but we're persisting and last night he slept a little better only needing to be fed once but we did have to resettle him twice(He resettled quite easily compared to the other nights during this week). I'll just have to see what happens as time goes on. I'm also not sure if the fact that my son is breastfed as to why he doesn't sleep through the night like other babies that I hear about that do like 10 -12 hours (I wish!!)
Hope this helps.

Try This.

Buy some baby rice ie " farex" and mix it in with his last bottle. It doesn't always work with every baby but most it does. It will fill his belly and he may sleep up to 6 hours. My son is almost 3 months and we do it with him and most nights we get 6 hours sleep. Best of luck.

Hi Collette,
Will give it a go. Can I just ask at what age did you start your son on the Farax?

My baby has slept through the night since he was 6 weeks old. I am one of the lucky mums. I can only imagine how hard it must be. I am breastfeeding about 6 or 7 feeds a day. We usually do a routinre of feed, play, feed, sleep. It basically means two feeds, sleep, two feeds, sleep and then two feeds and sleep for night. This means there is only 2 or 2.5 hours between the two feeds before a sleep. Sometimes my baby will miss the first sleep and we'll do a routine of three feeds, sleep, three feeds and sleep for the night.

We have tried the feed, play, sleep routine and it doesn't work for us because it takes too long to get him to sleep and then he is due for a feed when he finally does sleep. I figure that why should I stress myself trying to make him sleep after every feed/play? This is just what works for us, and it has been trial and error to find something that works.

I started at him at two months. Did you try it?

Collette,
Haven't tried it yet as he won't take a bottle. I've decided that I'll start him on it at 4 months. So I'll see what happens
Thanks smile

yes I'm pretty sure most health nurses say you shouldn't give farex or solids before 4 months.but some babies need it before then i spose smile

Flinstones,
i heard recently that babies require a certain amount of "calories" every day (don't know how much though) and if they are able to get them during the day then they generally sleep better at night. I used to give bubs about 5-6 breastfeeds during the day before she started solids and that seem to do the trick. I waited until she was almost 6 mths old before starting her on rice cereal. She was happy with just breastfeeding and the rice cereal was just to teach her to eat. I was always told to never put anything in a bottle other than formula or breastmilk. Even now we have an occassional night where she wakes and doesn't resettle unless I give her a feed.

The advice i got for dropping night feeds goes like this - you only give the baby one side(not both) and you do this for a few nights. After a few nights of only offering one side, time how long he is on the breast for the night feed and then start taking him off the breast earlier eg: if he feeds for 5 mins then next time take him off the breast after 4 mins. You gradually lessen the time he is on the breast until he realises it's just not worth it anymore. I tried this and after a couple of nights of only giving her one side she started to sleep through. Even now if she won't settle I only give her one side and she's happy to go back to sleep - much quicker for me to get back to bed too!!

Give it a try - good luck