3 1/2 month old sleeping questions

[AbbysMom]

I just want to make sure I'm not messing this kid up! My daughter sleeps from about 7 pm until 12 or 1 am, then wakes up every 2-3 hours during the night to eat. On a normal night, I wake up at 1 am, 3 am, 5 am and then up for the day at 7. I'm nursing so it's not too bad but I feel like the situation is not improving - i.e. she is not sleeping any longer stretches than she did a couple months ago. I was thinking of maybe trying to move her to her own room for a night or 2 b/c I know we do disturb her when we come in to bed. And I've also noticed that when I am feeding her lying down and we fall asleep, she'll start to nurse again after 2 hours without really even waking up so I'm wondering if I'm her pacifier and shouldn't have her in bed with me? Any suggestions? My older DD slept through the night by now so we never dealt with this issue! I don't mind nursing at night - I just don't want to create a bad situation. Thanks!

[jren]

Hi! My DS is 3 1/2 months now too. He just slept through the night for the first time ever last night. May have been a fluke, but I'm hoping... Anyway, we are bottle feeding, so not quite as convenient as nursing, but I have read that with nursing, if they are sleeping next to you they will nurse more often through the night and it's not a true waking. If that's not a problem for you, then I don't think it's creating any bad habits. As you move her out of your bed, she should stop doing it. I read Weissbluth's Healthy Sleep Habits and he specifically talks about this in his book.

One thing he mentioned you may want to try if you want to stretch it out a bit is not feeding at the first 2 hour interval (feed at the midnight waking, not at the 2AM waking, then feed when she wakes again). In other words, if it's only been 2 hours, she's probably not hungry, just want pacifying. If it's been 3 or 4 hours, then feed her.

Not sure what your daytime feeding schedule is, but we are trying to stretch DS out to 3 hours during the day and that is when he started sleeping longer stretches at night including last night's record breaking 10 hour stretch. (He has acid reflux and ate every 2 hours day and night, so we've been working on this for a while - I feel your pain!)