13-week-old sleeping/feeding issues - advice needed!

OctoberMammy

Hi everyone, long-time reader and first-time poster. This is long and probably too detailed (!) but any help is appreciated!

Our little boy is 13 weeks old tomorrow. Formula fed. So far, everything has been going as well as expected and he's a happy (for the most part!), healthy little chappy. I feel he's going through the 12-week growth spurt/leap at the moment and I plan on talking to my PHN about it this week, but just looking for opinions from people who've maybe gone through it about the best way forward.

Up until last week, he was generally a decent sleeper. He would have a bottle around 6.30/7pm, we'd keep him in the sitting room with us for the evening and he'd mostly doze/sleep on our laps or in his pram until his last bottle (10.30/11pm) and then we'd put him down swaddled (in co-sleeper) when we were going to bed. Some (but not all) nights he'd sleep through until 8am from that time.

Last week we decided to try a bedtime 'routine' with him (for both him and us!) - so after that 7pm bottle we started putting him down in the co-sleeper and have him on monitor. He generally sleeps for a few hours, maybe stirring a little bit, until we go to bed and give him his last bottle of the day around 11pm. We've been trying to dream-feed but that hasn't really worked, he wakes up every time or won't take the full bottle every time. The biggest change, however, is that he is now waking every hour or two throughout the night from 11pm on - not full-blown crying, but kicking (oh my god, the kicking!), squirming, and sometimes even waking up for an oul full-blown chat! It can take a good while to settle him again, sometimes he won't take the soother and needs to be held to settle back down.

Now, over the last day or two, he's stopped taking full bottles altogether and might only take 3 or 4oz of his usual 6oz bottle.

Now, my questions!

- Should we stop waking him for that 11pm final feed of the day? Should we just let him sleep until he wakes up himself - whether that's 2am or 3am or whatever time? I have no problem with doing that at all, it's just the broken sleep/constantly waking up that's killing us!

The thing that worries me about that is that he'll either not get his required calories/5 feeds throughout the day then (he's been taking around 6oz 5 times a day since about 8/9 weeks) OR become dependent on a middle-of-the-night feed, which could cause problems down the line...? I would have thought that going to sleep with a full belly would mean that he'll sleep better. He's winded and changed before he's put down, so wet/dirty bum not an issue.

- Is the feeding thing something to be concerned about or is it related to that aforementioned growth spurt/leap and will it pass? Anyone been through similar? I should note he's in good form otherwise. I'm wondering is it related to the bedtime routine we've introduced, or just coincidental? Should we scrap the 7.30pm bedtime for now?



Just to note, I'm fully aware that expecting babies to be in a 'routine' so early is pointless to a degree, that's not what I'm looking for - but just concerned about the change in his sleeping/eating patterns, I guess, and wondering how best to approach.

Any advice or opinions gratefully heard - thanks for reading!

shesty

Three months.Massive change time.There is a huge four month sleep regression, it's a biggie and it can come early-it came around 13 weeks with my first.
Keep doing what you are doing.It is mainly due to his age, I'm afraid, google the fourth trimester.He is just emerging from that, and there is a massive developmental leap
I would have done exactly what you are doing with all mine.From three months, I would head them for bed round 7/8ish (try and get the last nap to end a good two hours before that) and do a dream feed at 10/11.I admit i turn no lights on, and I didn't generally change a nappy (which can be debatable I know).My first two never took a full bottle at that time.My third has just finished the dream feed.He took 7 ozat that dream feed, but actually by six months, he started taking less and less, so I took my cue from him and cut it out at just over seven months.Just sit with him til he goes to sleep.He may be a bit windy-totally normal.If he is quite awake three hours later, I would feed him again because he will be hungry but if he falls asleep after an hour or so, I'd leave him be.He will get into the habit of sleeping through again -for a while anyway!!Don't worry about his calories.Once he is healthy, feeding well during the day and has his bedtime feed and a bit of dream feed, I would say he is just fine.

OctoberMammy

shesty wrote: »

Three months.Massive change time.There is a huge four month sleep regression, it's a biggie and it can come early-it came around 13 weeks with my first.
Keep doing what you are doing.It is mainly due to his age, I'm afraid, google the fourth trimester.He is just emerging from that, and there is a massive developmental leap
I would have done exactly what you are doing with all mine.From three months, I would head them for bed round 7/8ish (try and get the last nap to end a good two hours before that) and do a dream feed at 10/11.I admit i turn no lights on, and I didn't generally change a nappy (which can be debatable I know).My first two never took a full bottle at that time.My third has just finished the dream feed.He took 7 ozat that dream feed, but actually by six months, he started taking less and less, so I took my cue from him and cut it out at just over seven months.Just sit with him til he goes to sleep.He may be a bit windy-totally normal.If he is quite awake three hours later, I would feed him again because he will be hungry but if he falls asleep after an hour or so, I'd leave him be.He will get into the habit of sleeping through again -for a while anyway!!Don't worry about his calories.Once he is healthy, feeding well during the day and has his bedtime feed and a bit of dream feed, I would say he is just fine.

Thanks so much for your input, Shesty! Will keep going, so. Good to have reassurance that it's normal. I should have clarified that he's being fussy with bottles/not taking the full 6oz during the day too (only over last day or two, though). For example, last night he took 4oz at the 11pm feed, he took 3oz this morning at 7.30am and another 3oz just now at 11.30am. He's also started playing with the teat/rolling his tongue around mid-feed, whereas before he took the bottle well enough. I changed the teats over to Size 2 during the week, but doesn't seem to have made any difference... Will keep a close eye on him/it over the next day.

Also, he's going back down relatively easily after the 11pm feed, it's just that he's started waking up every hour or so from around 2pm/3pm!

As you might be able to tell, FTM here!

shesty

Oh look, I was there with myself and my first.We had a HORRENDOUS three weeks where she woke from 1-5 ish every night , it nearly killed us.And then one day I noticed she was waking at 1:30, then 2, then 2:30 and going back to sleep quicker, and suddenly it stopped .I just stopped taking her out of the cot,because that was making life interesting for her - used to just reinsert soother repeatedly.She never cried, she just woke for the chats.Admittedly all three of them have woken with wind from about 13 weeks to 20 something weeks, on and off, around that time of night.

And THEN I found out about the four month sleep regression!!However time, and two more babies, have taught me that broken sleep is the story of at least the first two years, but if you can get them in good habits early, it's a bit easier-you just have to ride out the phases as best you can then.

My third here is not a good feeder.He messes around with bottles a lot.If he has any bit of wind, or has to do a dirty nappy, he absolutely will not drink.He is also so easily distracted (ahem...typical boy...can't multi-task!!!), and has two big sisters who he finds amazingly entertaining, so I practically have to shut myelf away to get a bottle in.He is worse since he got wind of solid food!!I just keep topping him up, or go back to him with the rest of the bottle 20 mins later and he will often take it then.He's a buster though, so I admit I am not too worried!!

Blazer

We started doing the dream feeds between 3-4 months.
We used to still do the 11pm feed and we started to water down the 3am feed so they would end up drinking less.
After about 2 weeks of this they would sleep from 11pm onwards and a few weeks later they would skip past the 11pm feed.
We did this for both of our kids (2 years between them (3&5) and since 5 months or so both of them would sleep from 7pm to 7am.
And still do to this day.
At 6-7 months we moved them to their own room.
Routine is hugely important to babie and to parents. It's a tiring process so every little bit helps. I know parents whose kids are constantly waking during the night and I be thinking to myself "their routine sucks, lets them stay up way too late and keeping them in their room way past 6 months etc" all leads to bad routines and poor sleeping patterns.

margo321

In my experience i wouldn't wake a baby to feed. I feel it creates a habit. They need bottle to settle. Mine slept from 10 weeks approx all night. to be fair though they are all different and no real wrong way to do things.

OctoberMammy

Thanks Blazer and margo321, appreciate the replies.

I guess the thing I'd be concerned about is introducing a middle-of-the-night feed when he isn't waking for one (and hasn't really since the first few weeks). If we leave him to sleep through his 11pm feed, is that not just creating a habit of a feed later in the night that's less manageable in the long-term? This is something that I remember friends of ours specifically advising against, as their almost-2-year-old is still now waking for a bottle in the middle of the night!

I'm guessing it'd also mean that we'd have to increase the capacity of his daytime feeds (right now he's on a loose 7.30am-11.30am-3.30pm-7.30pm-11.30pm schedule) if we dropped the 11pm feed? That would be a struggle right now, as we're fighting him to get his usual amount in these last few days!

He was awake every hour from 2am last night The joys! Tell me again that it gets better!

shesty

It gets better :-)
I do not wake to feed at 11pm.I would lift in the dark, insert bottle, see how much he takes, leave it at that and pop him back in.
Otherwise yes, if he feeds at bedtime, then he will likely wake at 4am or so looking for a feed.Round then is a natural light point in sleep for everyone, and if he is hungry, you are stuck.But at least if he has had some feed at 11pm, then you could see can you hold him off til 6ish for the first feed-mine used to just look for a soother and mostly go back.And I am saying this from experience because my first used to wake round 4:30, so we fed her thinking she was hungry, and created a habit of waking between 4/5am for the first two bloody years.She wouldn't go back to sleep after that feed, she was up for the day-it nearly killed us.It took us til nearly 3 years to get her to even stretch til 6am, and only in recent weeks (aged 4.5 and in the dark depths of winter mornings) will she stretch to almost 7am.Not advisable.
To be honest, all of my three sleep through the night (I say that with the caveat that my youngest is still a baby so it's hit and miss but I can see his habits are good), so I can't say you create a reliance on going to sleep with a bottle that way to be honest.If you produce a bottle everytime they stir at night though, you will create that problem.But if he has been stretching from 11-8 then he is obviously able to do it, so I would hold out on him.He is still very small so I would stick with the 11pm feed, but try to avoid waking him for it.
Unfortunately at the moment I would say you are in the depths of a regression.It's hell but it gets better.

margo321

Mine didnt wake for a night feed after 10 weeks. they woke 5 or 6ish starving. fed went back to sleep till 10ish. good luck. there all different. go with your gut.