sleeping issues

[Terri]

Okay, I am about to pull my hair out! My son was sleeping about a 5 hr stretch at night and it was great! I would put him to bed at 9 and he would sleep till 2. Now he is only sleeping for about 2 or 3 hrs at a time. We even tried giving him cereal and nothing helps. Cereal or no cereal he keeps waking up. My ped told me that he should be sleeping at least a 5 hr stretch because he is up to 16 lbs. I need help! Please give me any advice you can.

We have a bedtime routine. He gets a bath (every other night), then I message him up with lotion and let him lay and kick and talk on his changing pad for a little while, then I rock him and read him a book till he gets fussy, then I nurse him, swaddle him and lay him down, usually asleep because he falls asleep nursing. If he doesn't fall asleep nursing I swaddle him and rock him till he falls asleep.

I used to think he was waking up because he is hungry but obviously he isn't being even with the cereal he wakes up, nurses on one side and goes back to bed. He is 3 1/2 months old FYI. HELP!

[devoted]

how many hours are there between his daytime feedings?

[crystal555rose]

Could be growth spurt and needing more calories- breastmilk has the most and is the best, so that is what he needs. Cereal is not a significant source of nutrition so I would not recommend giving that before his digestive tract is ready (6 months).

Could also be teething. My son would gnaw and drool for 5 months then all of the sudden there was a tooth.

I totally empathize with you, I used to stress out so much about whether he was going to sleep and for how long. At around 9 months I just got over it. There is no predicting if he would sleep through and it does not kill me to wake up. What was really driving me crazy was not knowing what was going to happen. So I let it go.

Now at 20 months my son still wakes up once to nurse and it is not a big deal- at least now he is in a bed where I can lay with him and he goes right back to sleep.

Good luck!

[Terri]

I feed him at 5:00 am before I get in the shower, even if he is asleep, then again at 7:00 am before we leave the house. He gets 3 4.5 oz. bottles at the sitters, and then I feed him about every two hours while I am home in the evenings. One the weekends when I am with him constantly, he eats about every 2-3 hrs.

[Terri]

Could be growth spurt and needing more calories- breastmilk has the most and is the best, so that is what he needs. Cereal is not a significant source of nutrition so I would not recommend giving that before his digestive tract is ready (6 months).

Could also be teething. My son would gnaw and drool for 5 months then all of the sudden there was a tooth.

I totally empathize with you, I used to stress out so much about whether he was going to sleep and for how long. At around 9 months I just got over it. There is no predicting if he would sleep through and it does not kill me to wake up. What was really driving me crazy was not knowing what was going to happen. So I let it go.

Now at 20 months my son still wakes up once to nurse and it is not a big deal- at least now he is in a bed where I can lay with him and he goes right back to sleep.

Good luck!

Yes, now that I know it was not the cereal that was making him sleep, I have stopped giving it to him. I really wanted to cosleep with my son and this would make it a lot easier to nurse him in the middle of the night and it would be a bonding time for the family, but he won't have it. He squirms so much and ends up waking up fussing. He sleeps much better in his crib, and our room is not big enough to move his crib in there.

[crystal555rose]

I could never cosleep when he was an infant. He was so hot, we would sweat and I would be in the same position all night long. It was horrible. I moved him to a crib the second night home and we never looked back!

He sounds like a growing boy. Mine was nursing about the same at that age. The evenings were constant nursing! Mine is also a comfort nurser and we introduced a pacifier around this age. Have you tried that? Side note, it was grandma and aunt that introduced it with success. He would not take a pacifier from me for a long time.

[Terri]

He does have a pacifier that he uses occasionally through the day, but I have never given him one at night because he would wake up screaming as soon as it fell out of his mouth. LOL. I haven't tried giving it to him when he woke up at night. I might try that to night, what is the worst that could happen, he wouldn't take it. LOL. Thanks!

[crystal555rose]

The pacifier is so bittersweet- it soothes him when I do not want a child attached to my body but it is also required equipment. We call it Bob and he asks, "Bob?" and I sing a song "Where is Bo-ob, Where is Bo-ob..." while we look for it.

I hope it helps!

[sweetkisses]

The only consistent thing about babies/toddlers and sleep is how inconsistent their sleep patterns are. Whatever he is going through at the moment (teeting, growing spurt) who knows, will pass. He will eventually start sleeping longer stretches again. Enjoy that time while it last but try not to get to frustrated when the sleeping pattern changes again. Just remind yourself it won't last forever!

That is a weird comment from you pedi about how he should be sleeping 5hrs straight b/c he weighs 16lbs. What does that have to do with anything?

[StillSingingMom]

That's one of those factoids that is out there- that a baby can "sleep through the night" once he reaches 16 pounds. At last your pedi limited that to a "five hour stretch" which is much more reasonable.

Regardless of what your pedi or anyone else thinks, your baby is waking up. He's hungry. Feed him.

It's common for babies to have sleep disruptions, especially with growth spurts and teething. Nothing you can do will convince your baby to stay asleep. He isn't waking up to show you who is the boss in your house. He's just awake. How many adults do you know who get hungry and then don't eat? I don't know too many, myself, and adults are not growing like mad.

Often a baby undergoing a growth spurt just grows so fast that he uses up all that milk in his belly. It's gone, and he's hungry.

Also, breastfed babies have a different growth curve than formula fed babies. Breastfed babies grow faster at a younger age (like up to six months) and then slow down. Many of these nuggets of wisdom about sleep and growth come from experience with formula fed babies (and on older formulations of formula, at that). And FF babies have to work a lot harder to digest their food. So they spend a lot of energy digesting (which BF babies use on growth) and it takes them a lot longer to get hungry.

Adding cereal to the mix often makes things worse, as babies resist taking in more calories than they need. So if you add cereal to the diet, you are putting in more carbs and less fat and protein. This happens because baby will resist being overfed and take in the same amount of total calories, and now some of those calories come without any fat or protein at all.

Bottle fed babies sometimes learn to tolerate overfeeding, but breastfed babies tend to resist it.