Sleep for baby

rebelcork

Our little one is 5 months old next Friday.She is being breast fed and is thriving.She is also taking some solids,rusk and baby rice twice a day.
Problem is that she sleeps very little.She wakes every 2.5 to 3 hours nightly for a feed and naps for an hour or 2 morning and afternoon.
How can we get her to maybe just wake once in the night instead of 4 or 5 times?
Advice would be much appreciated.....

hellbell123

a good bedtime routine is a good idea if your not already in one..such as bath,bottle and general winding down time before bed.. i have been told to substitute one of the night feeds with cooled boiled water as it can discourage baby from waking ( havnt tried it though it always seemed a bit mean to me )

hope that helps a bit ..
helen

Tarakiwa

hellbell123 wrote:

a good bedtime routine is a good idea if your not already in one..such as bath,bottle and general winding down time before bed.. i have been told to substitute one of the night feeds with cooled boiled water as it can discourage baby from waking ( havnt tried it though it always seemed a bit mean to me )

hope that helps a bit ..
helen

This is great advise!
My daughter is 5 months old now.
She has had a solid bed time routine since the day she was born & now sleeps from 8pm until 6:30 am without waking.

I have heard that the bottle of water idea works as it disuades the baby to wake.

RIRI

The bottle of water trick never worked for us I'm sorry to say.

What did work for us was "Dream Feeds". Basically you pick them up before they'd usually wake & give them a feed. I bottle fed so I am unsure how well it works with breast fed babies (or babies other than mine tbh) possibly by expressing?? The idea came from Tracy Hogg The author of The Baby Whisperer who kept me sane - worked great for us but that said every baby & parent is different. Best of luck with getting babs to sleep through

High&Low

A solid routine is very important, bath at more or less same time followed by feed and then bed.

Very early on we introduced an extra feed before putting our little one to bed to ensure that she was full before going down, she had a feed at 6-6.30 followed by one at 8pm. She was breastfed with the exception of one bottle introduced at 6 weeks. Our little one is 18 months old now and is sleeping the night through since only a couple of months old. Hope we are as lucky with number two on the way in February.

We had and still have the occassional night where she wakes up, but this is usually as a result of teeth, bad dream or her being a little under the weather.

Is your baby still in your room, perhaps you or your partner may keep her awake.

There is also the option of a bit of controlled crying, I know this worked for friends and siblings of ours and also worked for us when trying to put our little one for her daytime nap.

littlebug

Some breastfed babies feed like that unfortunately As the solids increased with mine the time between wake ups did stretch a bit but he didn't actually sleep through a night until he was weaned completely.

That said my daughter was bottle fed from 6 weeks and never slept a night til she was 1 1/2.
Some babies get into a routine easily and some don't. I probably tried all the tricks in the book with both of mine and none of them worked because that's just the way my babies were!

On the other hand I have a friend whose breastfed baby slept 12 hours at night from 6 weeks... it's just individual little personalities, patterns and needs.
I did do the sleep training thing with my youngest but that was to get him to go to sleep rather than to stay asleep as it was taking me 2 hours+ on and off the boob to get him to drop off. That worked a treat and he learned to go to sleep by himself in 3 days. You can't really teach a baby not to wake up though but if they have learned to go back to sleep by themselves without mommy it does help.
I think you need to be really really desperate to do it though. I was at my wits end.

hellbell123

littlebug wrote:

That said my daughter was bottle fed from 6 weeks and never slept a night til she was 1 1/2.
Some babies get into a routine easily and some don't. I probably tried all the tricks in the book with both of mine and none of them worked because that's just the way my babies were!

my daughter was quite similar ( got through by constantly telling myself it wouldnt last forever )
yet both my boys settled into a routine fairly quickly ..i wonder if its a gender thing ?? (mite be another topic altogether there ) !!:)

littlebug

hellbell123 wrote:

my daughter was quite similar ( got through by constantly telling myself it wouldnt last forever )
yet both my boys settled into a routine fairly quickly ..i wonder if its a gender thing ?? (mite be another topic altogether there ) !!:)

hmm maybe? I don't know. I think it's good for the OP to know thought that they aren't necessarily doing anything wrong, some babies are just like that and don't fit into routines easily and sometimes youve just got to go with the flow and as you said keep telling yourself it won't last forever.

Davidth88

Yep routine , our little one has slept through almost from about 3 months !

OP, what time are you letting her nap in the afternoon.

Love it or loath it we used the routines out of the Gina Ford book, we didn't take her advice too literally , after all these little ones haven't read the books have they ! But we found it a useful GUIDE emphasis on the word guide .

High&Low

Davidth88 wrote:

Yep routine , our little one has slept through almost from about 3 months !

OP, what time are you letting her nap in the afternoon.

Love it or loath it we used the routines out of the Gina Ford book, we didn't take her advice too literally , after all these little ones haven't read the books have they ! But we found it a useful GUIDE emphasis on the word guide .

Like you we also picked up a few things from the Gina Ford book, but you are right it should only be used as a guide.

hellbell123

i wonder if any of you have tried baby massage ??

i took a 5 week course with my son who is now nearly 7 mnths..hes been an all nite sleeper since he was 7 weeks..it mite be worthwhile for the OP to learn some basic relaxation techniques..its really enjoyable for baby and i found it quite relaxing too!!

there are some great instruction books available

Ayla

This one might get me butchered alive, but this is what we've done (and it's helped)...

We're living in a mobile home while building our house and it gets quite cold at night. We have a heater in the bedroom so it's nice and cozy during the night, but the rest of the trailer is chilly.

When my breastfed DD (6 months old when we moved into the trailer, now she's almost 9 months) started waking frequently during the night, I realized it's because I would bring her into our bed and feed her. Why would she want to stay asleep/put herself back to sleep in her cot if she could wake and move into mom/dad's bed?

So I started bringing her out of the bedroom into the chilly living space, turning on all the lights as we went, and I'd feed her there. Didn't take her but two nights to figure out that she didn't like going out of her nice cozy dark cot. She started sleeping much longer periods. Now she usually gets up once a night, and that's *usually* not until around 4.

May sound a bit cruel, but waking up 4-5 times a night turns mom & dad into grouches, and that doesn't help anyone.

High&Low

Ayla wrote:

This one might get me butchered alive, but this is what we've done (and it's helped)...

We're living in a mobile home while building our house and it gets quite cold at night. We have a heater in the bedroom so it's nice and cozy during the night, but the rest of the trailer is chilly.

When my breastfed DD (6 months old when we moved into the trailer, now she's almost 9 months) started waking frequently during the night, I realized it's because I would bring her into our bed and feed her. Why would she want to stay asleep/put herself back to sleep in her cot if she could wake and move into mom/dad's bed?

So I started bringing her out of the bedroom into the chilly living space, turning on all the lights as we went, and I'd feed her there. Didn't take her but two nights to figure out that she didn't like going out of her nice cozy dark cot. She started sleeping much longer periods. Now she usually gets up once a night, and that's *usually* not until around 4.

May sound a bit cruel, but waking up 4-5 times a night turns mom & dad into grouches, and that doesn't help anyone.

I think its a great idea.

crosstownk

There are lots of things that can be tried like what's posted above. Some work, some don't. Every baby is different as are parents. We tried lots of things with our son (7 months). And nothing specific worked. Eventually he just started sleeping through of his own accord.

By all means try everything that you think might help/work. But don't try different things every night. Try one thing for a week/ten days - babys need a routine. If you keep swapping from one idea to the next on a nightly basis you could well be making matters worse resulting in less sleep for the parents.