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  1. #1
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    Default Heavy duty nursing at night

    Is this just another stage? My baby is now about 4.5 months old. A month ago she was nursing once per night. Now she's back to 3x per night and she takes in a lot each time. During the day she gets really distracted sometimes and only seems to snack. So it's like she's reverse cycling but I'm here all the time! It seems like the distraction is something that happens at this age. Is the more frequent waking and nursing at night something that just goes along with that? Or is the more frequent nursing something that happens as they get ready for solids?

  2. #2
    Momof3Labs is offline Pink Diamond level (15,000+ posts)
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    Default RE: Heavy duty nursing at night

    You've hit on the reason, I think - she's more distracted during the day so making up for it at night. It doesn't really have anything to do with getting ready for solids. To get her to nurse less at night, work on getting her to nurse more during the day by nursing in a quiet, dark place with few distractions.
    Single mom to

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  3. #3
    lrg is offline Silver level (200+ posts)
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    Default RE: Heavy duty nursing at night

    Are you familiar with the Babywise Book? I know many people who swear by it. I sort of followed it, as well as I could, and I think it helped. We had some tummy issues in the beginning that made it difficult. But I know people who started it late, and found that it worked for them.

    Basically, the concept is that during the day, you want to get your baby on an eat, then wake, then sleep cycle and try to stay on a 2.5 - 3 hours between feedings schedule. No snack feeding. If you follow this, they will eventually begin sleeping through the night. I know by 4.5 months, they are starting to sleep a little less and be awake a little more, but unless there are health reasons, your baby should be able to go at least 3 hours between feedings.

    I know mine by 4 months old was going at least 7.5 - 8 hours straight at night without feeding. I did something most people thought was crazy and woke him for his last feeding around 11 pm. I did this because he was eating about every 4 hours during the day at 7 am, 11am, 3 pm, and 7pm. If I didn't wake him for that 11pm feeding, he'd wake up after about 7 hours, which was in the middle of the night/way too early morning. So by feeding him at around 11, or 11:30, he'd go until 7:00 the next morning.

    There are techniques for dropping a feeding, too. Babywise covers some. You might want to try dropping one night feeding at a time. I forget it all now, but I know you can try reducing the amount of milk your baby gets little by little until the feeding is gone and hopefully she won't need it anymore. Once you feel she is taking plenty of milk during the day, letting her cry it out might be something you'll have to consider to start dropping those extra feedings. (I know, really hard)

  4. #4
    sntm's Avatar
    sntm is offline Diamond level (5000+ posts)
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    Default fyi

    http://www.ezzo.info

    shannon
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  5. #5
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    Default RE: Heavy duty nursing at night


    >
    >Basically, the concept is that during the day, you want to
    >get your baby on an eat, then wake, then sleep cycle and try
    >to stay on a 2.5 - 3 hours between feedings schedule. No
    >snack feeding.

    That goes against the AAP recommendations to feed the baby on demand, which means to feed the baby when it is hungry, not when the clock says to feed the baby.

    I don't understand how someone can look at a hungry baby and say "not yet sweetie you have to wait until the clock strikes 3". I will never understand that. I can't even stand to hear a hungry baby crying in a store and the parents are just standing there doing nothing. It makes me anxious, and makes my breasts leak.

    >If you follow this, they will eventually begin
    >sleeping through the night.

    Or they will eventually be diagnosed as failure to thrive, if one follows this too rigidly.

    ...Karen
    Jacob Nathaniel Feb 91
    Logan Elizabeth Mar 03

  6. #6
    KGoes Guest

    Default RE: Heavy duty nursing at night

    DD went through a similar phase at about 5 months - the world is just too interesting to actually eat during the day, and then she would be hungry at night. Besides trying the quiet room with no distraction plan, giving her bottles of EBM during the day helped. She takes a bottle faster, so she was getting more milk, and she can look around more freely with a bottle so she would eat longer. Just one or two bottles during the day did the trick and eased up on the night feedings.
    And I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that you should feed your baby when she is hungry. You can get your baby on a schedule without letting her scream in hunger.
    Good luck!!
    Kelley
    DD born 7/03

  7. #7
    lrg is offline Silver level (200+ posts)
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    Default RE: Heavy duty nursing at night

    Wow. Ok, I was just trying to be helpful. I was most certainly not suggesting not to feed a hungry baby. I, too, have a broken heart when I hear a crying baby in a store that a parent isn't tending to.

    It's not healthy for a parent or their baby to not be sleeping through the night after a while - we all need sleep. Our pediatrician is the one who told us to try to let ours cry at night. He did not feel by the time he was 4 months old that extra night feedings were necessary since he was thriving so well and thought that our baby needed to learn to soothe himself, that he was depending on us for comfort, so as long as we continued to comfort him (whether by feeding, holding, etc) he'd never learn to fall back asleep on his own.

    Waking in the night is normal for all of us as we go through our sleep cycles and sometimes the waking and crying is b/c they don't know any better on how to fall back to sleep on their own. So they learn to fall back to sleep by whatever method you provide for them and that becomes the only way they know how. He said 30 minutes, we had a shorter threshold than that, but it didn't end up happening often so it wasn't a big issue.

    Yes, my son went through a brief period of snack feeding when he was a few weeks old that I had to try to push him a little to get him to take full feedings. No, I absolutely did not let him cry until the clock said 3 hours. Actually, he had a tear in his lung when he was born that put him in the NICU for 24 hours and we were told to try to avoid extensive crying for the first few weeks to avoid re-opening the tear. So if you want to talk about parents who were afraid of letting their baby cry, we were paranoid freaks about it...for much longer than the 2-3 weeks they recommended.

    But when the snack feeding started during the day, and I felt it was too soon to feed again (my nipples even needed the break), I'd try to hold him off with a paci, by rocking him, holding him, until it was apparent that he just needed to eat. (again, with almost no crying) Then the problem can start to fix itself b/c he's hungry enough to take a fuller feeding, and then doesn't need a snack so soon again. Within a few days, the problem was fixed. And I did this with my own intuition, with the guidance of the nurses at the ped office, and with some LC advice.

    I'm trying not to be offended, but I can't help it. I was only offering advice that worked for me and worked for others in trying to help someone solve a problem. No one has to do what I suggested, and I'd never even know it. Didn't think the attack on what kind of mother I am was necessary.

  8. #8
    lrg is offline Silver level (200+ posts)
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    Default RE: Heavy duty nursing at night

    I just went to that ezzo.com web site and just have a few things to add. Just like everything else with babies, as many I'm sure have discovered, it's not an exact science. You have to figure out what works for your baby b/c only you know your baby best. I said I followed Babywise, and I did to an extent in that I tried to avoid snack feeding and keep him on an eat/wake/sleep schedule as close as I could WITHOUT crying (the closest thing he did to crying for the few days he was "snacking" was a mild whine that was soothed in some way or another within seconds). But I also always did what I felt was best in every circumstance. I would hope any parent would have the common sense to do the same. If he fell asleep after a feeding and didn't do his eat/wake/sleep order, my gosh, I let him sleep!

    In defense of what I saw on the ezzo.com web site, I scanned through the Babywise book again b/c the article sounded very biased and also inaccurate from what I could remember.

    Quote from article..." The book's feeding schedule, called Parent Directed Feeding (PDF), consists of feeding newborns at intervals of three to three and one-half hours (described as two and one-half to three hours from the end of the last 30-minute feeding) beginning at birth. Nighttime feedings are eliminated at eight weeks."

    Quote from the book, page 74..."As a general rule, the 1st 2 months you will need to feed your baby every 2.5 - 3 hours from the beginning of one feeding to the beginning of the next. Sometimes it may be less and sometimes slightly more, but this time frame is a healthy average....With these recommended times you can average between eight to ten feedings a day in the early weeks."

    **It also goes on to say that there may be times you need to feed your baby sooner than 2.5 hours and also says that going longer than 3.5 hours in the early weeks can produce too little stimulation for successful lactation. Additionally, the book never says you should eliminate night-time feedings at 8 weeks. It says if you follow their schedule of eat/wake/sleep, most babies are sleeping thru the night around 8 weeks naturally and the rest usually by 12 weeks. Never, ever, does it say to force them to by just "dropping" a feeding. It gives suggestions on how to get your baby not to depend on that feeding or to try and determine if they are feeding as a way to fall back to sleep, not necessarily out of hunger.

    Quote from article..."In a question-and-answer section, parents of a 2-week-old baby, who did not get a full feeding at the last scheduled time and wants to eat again, are instructed that babies learn quickly from the laws of natural consequences. "If your daughter doesn't eat at one feeding, then make her wait until the next one."
    **I did not find this quote in skimming, but I can't believe it's in there worded that way. From everything I read, it does not support this kind of behavior. The book constantly says throughout, If your baby is hungry, feed her. I found this confusing at first that they kept saying this in contrast to some other things, but now I get that all they are saying is that you absolutely do not need to let your baby go hungry, you just need to do what you can to assist them in staying on a schedule and taking full feedings. What they are trying to promote is that crying is not always hunger, but it will be if they are always snacking and not getting full feedings. Additionally, if you feed a baby a snack, they may not get the hindmilk b/c he didn't nurse long enough, and they are therefore hungry more often and still not getting the rich hindmilk.

    Quote from book p. 40 "When the hunger cue is present, the clock is submissive to the cue, because the hunger cues, not the clock, determine feedings."

    Were there parts of this book that annoyed me or that I didn't think made a whole lot of sense? Yes. Like I said, I used their philosophy as a guide and I definitely believe the routine helped with my milk, helped my baby thrive (he was 95th % all along), and helped him begin to sleep through the night by 16 weeks (not 12). In addition to helping me have a normal life that didn't cause me to drop everything to find a place to nurse at the mall or wherever I was b/c I always knew approximately when I would need to feed him. If he cried sooner and I thought it was hunger, he got fed. But most of the time, he was so on schedule it was weird to me.

  9. #9
    wagner36 is offline Platinum level (1000+ posts)
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    Default RE: Heavy duty nursing at night

    Charlie also started frequent night wakings at about 4.5 months. It was teething. I think he woke up between sleep cycles, was uncomfortable because of his teeth and couldn't go back to sleep. I, of course, in a sleep-deprived state, would stick a boob in his mouth, and he would eventually go back to sleep. He wouldn't fully nurse, just eat for a few minutes and then suck for awhile (it makes his teeth feel better). In retrospect, this may not have been the best plan. We started co-sleeping, which I really enjoy, but now Charlie is 8 months old with 8 teeth and the molars coming in and until this week, his sleeping schedule has been totally erratic and he liked to nurse all night. Suddenly, the last week or so, he seemed to put himself on a schedule. He now gets sleepy at about 9:00, sleeps until 1:45 when he nurses, goes back to sleep until 5:45, nurses some more and then wakes up for the day promptly at 8:15.

    So, I don't have any suggestions - solids didn't work for us at all. I would give her gums a feel and see if that has anything to do with it.

    Good luck!

  10. #10
    sntm's Avatar
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    Default RE: Heavy duty nursing at night

    I wasn't trying to offend or attack, just inform anyone who may be reading this thread. Many people are unaware of how potentially dangerous the advice can be, since the book is sold in mainstream bookstores. There are many other books out there that give much more reasonable advice. Sounds like your son did fine, but a disproportionate number of others have not and night wakings for nursing can be the baby's way of increasing your supply when it is needed for growth spurts. Also, there is no medical reason against "snack" feeding, as long as adequate amounts of hindmilk are obtained throughout the day. If he just needed to suck, then nothing wrong with a pacifier, but many babies need to eat much more frequently than Ezzo (who has no medical training) recommends.

    Sorry if I offended.

    shannon
    not-even-pregnant-yet-overachiever
    trying-to-conceive :)
    PREGNANT! EDD 6/9/03
    mama to Jack 6/6/03

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