At night how do you decide on food vs

[Brie]

At this stage, I pretty much always try feeding first in the middle of the night because I'm lazy and side-lying nursing does the trick 9 times out of 10.

Generally he is up once in the middle of the night/verrrry early morning to eat because he's hungry, but if he's up again he just wants to comfort suck and cuddle and that's fine with me.

[catbus]

Jan 4, 2013 22:24:17 GMT -5 jenny1980 said:

Does she take a paci?

Ditto this question. E only wakes up once on a normal night, and sometimes sleeps through. His normal wake-up time is 2:30 or later. If he wakes before then, I send H into his room to attempt to help him back to sleep, which usually just requires reinserting the pacifier.
Usually that works. But if he weren't so consistent in his wakings, I'm not sure what I'd do. Does she have a baseline yet?

[Deleted]

For about a month (4 - 5 months) I fought feeding him at night. I would feed him every....5 hours....maybe? But it took an hour or so to get him back down, only to sleep for an hour.

Finally I just started nursing again. 5 minutes of nursing and he's back down...I'll take it! He wakes up typically twice a night. Last night he was up at 1030 and 430 and then up at 730 for the day. That's not too bad IMO.

My general rule is if its been 3 hours since he ate H goes in first. If he can't settle him I go in. More than that and I go in to nurse.

[jena]

Boob first. My brain does not function well at 2am, therefore I always try BFing first. If that doesn't work, her screaming will have made me more alert and I can think of other things to try.

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[cjeanette]

DD would cry if she lost her fingers from her mouth. Putting them back in often helped.

[DarcyLongfellow]

I always nursed for night wake ups -- right up until I weaned her at almost three. It was just the fastest way to put her back to sleep!

She didn't sleep through the night until 18 months, though. I have no idea if that's related or not!

[jackpackage]

If it were me, I would nurse both sides at 11:45, let h take the 1 & 2, and nurse at 4. H and I usually have a 15-20 minute rule where if one of us can't soothe him the other offers to take over, so I'd give in and nurse him at 1:15 if he needed.

[gibbinator]

On a wakeful night like you describe (which is what he's been doing since mid-December) If it's within the first 3hrs of putting him to bed, I try to pat him back to sleep first and it often works.

His first wakeup near our bedtime I do a diaper change and feed. After that it's all feed until I give up and bed share around 4-5am and dh gets the boot.

If he's waking up in short intervals (<1.5hrs) really crying I'll also try Tylenol just to see if pain is the problem.

Sending dh in just makes ds hysterical.

[Deleted]

Funny, I haven been wondering the same thing. DD has slept 8 hour stretches for several days in a row so I know she is capable of going that long without eating. There have only been a few times where she's woken up before the 3-hour mark. DH and I have both been able to just rock her back to sleep in those cases. Tonight I fed her at 12:30 and she woke up again at 2. She wasn't crying (just babbling) so I decided I would give her 2 minutes before I got up to rock her, unless things escalated before then. She fell back to sleep on her own with no intervention from me. Granted she's not in our room so it was a little easier for me to try to tune her out. Room-sharing would make that a challenge and my first instinct would be to get her quiet which ever way is fastest. Instead, I was able to turn down the monitor.

Age had her 4 month well visit yesterday and her pedi seemed to think she might not need to eat so much in the middle of the night anymore. Not sure how much I believe that, though. I did feed her at 12:30 and right now (5:00) and she ate full meals both times so I think she was hungry. Considering she had gone 4.5 hours between feedings both times, I was fine with nursing. And I could tell by her yelling that it was more urgent that I tend to her those times vs the 2am wake-up.

[moonstone523]

I always try feeding too, and like you've I've been up 5-6x a night since going back to work. DD sleeps in the pack and play in our room. Since I always try feeding first, she would leak through diapers. I never put the excessive wakings/feedings and leaky diapers together, but it makes sense now.

Well, last night I took a different approach. She naps in her swing, so I had her sleep there all night. And sure enough she only woke up 1x at her normal 230 hour to eat and right back to the swing to sleep.

Only now I'm MEGA engorged. Like think week 1 engorged. I was literally dripping out of my shirt.

But the swing. I finally got a decent night sleep.

[curbsideprophet]

At that age, typically we tried feeding first. However if there were that many wake ups we might not have tried feeding at all of them.

[chickens987]

Last night about an hour after a feed (so, 2 am), Maisie woke up crying. I gave her her paci and she fell right back to sleep. I waited a little and removed the paci (so dropping it wouldn't startle her awake) and totally misjudged how asleep she was! She started screaming and the only option was to feed her This morning she had leaked all out of her double stuffed diaper for the first time. Of course her sleep is all kinds of F-ed up due to the jet lag, but so is mine dammit!!

[imimahoney]

I fed through the night until we sleep trained at 6 months. At that time we cut out the MOTN feeding and the rocking to sleep. I guess he was ready because there was no struggle, no crying for hours, it worked like magic.

[Deleted]

I didn't breastfeed any of my kids much past 3 months so that might make a difference in my answer. But I probably would have fed at 11:45 and 4 and tried a pacifier/rocking her down the other times.