DS used to sleep through the night...

[junior503]

When DS was approaching 4 mos., he reliably slept 8 hr stretches and started sleeping up to 11 hr stretches at night. Well, we've regressed between months 4 and 5. Instead of going to bed around 8 and sleeping through till 7 or 8 am with either one feeding around 4 am or no feedings, we now get up around midnight and 4 am for two feedings a night. At first, when he started getting up at midnight, DH would try to comfort him back to sleep. When this didn't work(meaning DS continued to scream his head off), I nursed him and he was able to be put in the crib drowsy but awake and would coo himself to sleep. I've started to try to limit the midnight feeding since I would like to redistribute his daily calorie allotment. It doesn't always work. He sometimes gets mad and wants to nurse more. And, when he is done, he again will coo himself back to sleep.

In order to delay feeding with minimal sleep disturbance, I was thinking of having DH offer him water when he wakes up. Has anyone tried this as a way of delaying a night-time feeding you believe your thriving 5 mo. old no longer needs? Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

[Sarah1]

We had the exact same experience--DD was sleeping thru the night, then around 4-5 mos, started waking up 1-2 times wanting to eat. I never tried the water, but here's what we did and it worked for us:

For the first week she started this, I just let her nurse as long as she wanted, thinking it could be a growth spurt, etc...then when I was starting to think she didn't need to be eating as much, I started reducing the nursing time by a minute or so each session. For example, if she would nurse on one breast for, say, 7 minutes, I would take her off after 6 minutes, then 5, then 4, etc...I had a clock next to where I would nurse so that I could keep track. She would cry or fuss a little bit (less than a minute), but she got used to it and within a week she dropped the earlier of the two night feedings. I do think that waking was mainly out of habit, not b/c she was genuinely hungry.

I continued to nurse her once a night until 6 1/2 mos, at which point we dropped that feeding on the advice of our ped.

Hope that helps a little.

[nathansmom]

Nathan gets only water if he wakes up after 10pm and before 6am. The first night he drank the whole bottle. The second night half a bottle. The third night he took a drink and refused the bottle. We are now 2 weeks into the water if he wakes up at night routine and sometimes he wakes for a bottle. We still have nights where he drinks all of the water but mostly he sucks for a minute and then goes back to sleep.

HTH