night sleep

[devoted]

is it possible for a bf baby to sleep through the night?

[devoted]

if so how? any suggestions are welcome!

[Amy_G_]

at 3 months, 4 days,
it's highly unlikely that baby will sleep thru the night. They still need the fuel of frequent feedings.
the definition of sleeping thru the night for a baby is 5 hours straight, FYI.

3 months is prime growth spurt. sleep training at that time would be highly ineffective, and may effect your supply increasing to meet baby's needs.

[StillSingingMom]

I find that my BF babies slept for four hour stretches by three months. So by cosleeping and going to bed when the baby did, I got four hours of sleep, nursed the baby, and got four more hours of sleep.

This is pretty close to what an adult needs; your sleep is broken into cycles that are four hours long, more or less. What doesn't work nearly as well is putting baby to bed at eight, letting baby sleep for a couple of hours, going to bed at ten, waking at midnight to feed baby, sleeping until four when baby wants to nurse again, and then sleeping until six or seven.

That ends up disrupting your sleep cycle every time it gets going. But YMMV.

[devoted]

okay. so how many naps a day should I allow him to have. Does anyone have any examples of a schedule for their 3 month old? I know that 3 month olds don't really abide by a schedule but my family is on a schedule. my daughter goes to school and I have to be up and out at a certain time and off to pick her up at a certain time. What is a good time for a 3 month old to go to bed? If I go to bed with him then I will never get my house and office work done. I'm sure there is a simple solution to this but I am just not seeing it because I am so worn out. help.

[StillSingingMom]

Let him have as many naps during the day as he wants. Schedule or not, baby needs what he needs. Watch him for cues when he is sleepy; see if you can figure out what his approximate needs are, and then see if you can work around that.

Maybe you could take a few days off, as much as possible, to see what baby needs and what you need, too? I know, there is always so much to do. These first months are so hard. You may find that it is possible to get office work done while baby naps in a sling. Or something.

[Candi]

haha, how many should you ALLOW him to have? Dont' worry about it. Let him sleep when he wants to sleep.

You don't have to lay down with him when he sleeps either. If you feed him to sleep laying down, you can either leave him there when you are done, or move him to his crib or swing or bouncy seat to sleep.

[stys82]

I agree with the above posters, a 3 mos old needs to nap when he's sleepy. As for bedtime, for our DS we would consider bedtime around 7pm. sometimes it was 6:30 and sometimes it wasn't until 8 but if he fell asleep in that window, we would lay him down for the night. This worked better for us than trying to keep him up late becuase it didn't matter what time he went to bed, he would always (and still does) wake up for the day around 5:30am!

[PghMom]

I agree - no rigid scheduling at this point. However, I have done a lot of reading on the devlelopment of sleep patterns in babies, and a regular occuring mid-morning nap usually develops in babies around 12 - 16 weeks. Watch for drowsy signs and plan to lay your baby down for a morning nap between 9 or 10 am. A regular occuring mid-afternoon nap develops several weeks later - sometime between 12 and 2. It's the biology of how our sleep rhythms develop. Until then, don't let baby get overtired. Just let him sleep when he is drowsy. Eventually, the many short naps will consolidate into these 2 longer daytime naps. BTW, I have found that an earlier bedtime often helps my lo sleep better for her naps the next day...seems counterintuitive, but it works. I recommend between 6 and 8 for a bedtime...when yawning is just getting started and BEFORE baby melts down. :)