Post by bananapancakes on Jan 15, 2016 19:16:01 GMT -5
No flames because clearly you mean well and you're trying your best but I really think you need to adjust your expectations here. He is four months old. Many (maybe even most) 4 month olds need to eat overnight. Your first son was the exception, not the norm. This little guy is perfectly normal. Even though I'm not a fan of CIO, I can sort of understand it for a baby who is up every sleep cycle or and/or takes forever to fall back asleep after a feeding but I don't think this is the case here. If he's sleeping 8 or 9 hours, waking to eat once, and then sleeping for another 2-3 hours, I think he's actually doing really well! I'm sorry you're tired. I can totally empathize there. Can your H and you trade off nights so every other night you get a full night sleep? You'll probably both get more sleep than what you're doing here. Hugs. I hope you find something that works for all three of you.
Post by bananapancakes on Jan 15, 2016 19:18:29 GMT -5
Oh, and the other thing that I thought of is that just because he didn't need to eat MOTN one night or even one week doesn't mean that he'll never need to eat again MOTN. Growth spurts and milestones mess all that up. Some days/nights he may just simply need more calories than others.
Post by carolinagirl831 on Jan 15, 2016 19:41:26 GMT -5
I agree you're not ruining him. My kids both have slept long periods than woke up to eat on and off depending on growth spurts. My 8 month old almost always wakes between 3-5. I 100% of the time feed her a bottle because she'll sleep another few hours. Way better than a 4 am wake uo
Post by patbutcher on Jan 15, 2016 19:50:45 GMT -5
Agree with everyone else. I'm afraid you need to adjust your expectations. I did CIo for bedtime only so she would sleep in the crib without a song and dance. I fed her motn until 10 months. Not saying you will have to wait that long for him to sttn but it really would be quicker to run in and feed him than let him cry for out for 2 hours.
The longest I let her cio for bedtime was 45 minutes. Like I say, I never did cio in the motn because I was worried she was actually hungry. Eventually she just started sttn herself.
Post by sparkythelawyer on Jan 15, 2016 19:52:54 GMT -5
At four months I think he's probably just hungry. Sparkybaby still wakes to eat after 6-8 hours. But if I just spend ten minutes to feed her she goes right back down
DS is 9 months and he still eats once overnight. I would not CIO at that age. I don't think it's unusual at all for him to need to eat in the MOTN. It sounds like he's sleeping really well for the most part. I think DS started sleeping mostly through the night around 7 months. He now sleeps 7:30-5:00am most nights and gets up for the day at 7:30 (I feed him at 5). I do feed him at other times if he's really escalating, but it's unusual for that to happen. He's never gotten used to eating at off times.
I understand your frustration, but I think it's unreasonable to expect a 4 month old to go all night without eating. If he's waking up constantly then I would totally support sleep training at this age. In fact, I did it with my own DD at the same age. But if he's just waking to eat and then goes back to sleep, he is likely just hungry. Even after sleep training, my daughter still woke to eat at least 2x per night. Sleep training just helped us get away from the waking every sleep cycle and taking hours to get her down for the night initially. Remember that at only 4 months there's some big growth spurts ahead of him and even though he may not have been hungry MOTN last week or whenever, he very well may be hungry again now (or in the future).
But he is too young to be going that long without eating. Sorry, I know that isn't what you want to hear.
Jack was a freak of nature. He did 12 hours very very early with no intervention from us. We did some CIO for bedtime but never had to do in the middle of the night.
Leo was just different. He legit needed to eat in the night until 10 months. I had to adjust my expectations between the two kids.
Both are very good sleepers. We didn't ruin anything by giving Leo a bottle once in a 12 hour period. He just needed it. And eventually just didn't need it.
Don't feel bad. Sleep issues are so stressful and difficult to deal with. We did Ferber at 5 months and I still nursed DS once or twice overnight. I think the longest he cried was 45ish minutes on the first night for falling asleep. He's 13 months and he usually still wakes to nurse once in the early morning. He also gets into bad sleeping habits so easily still, so teething and illness always set him back. He's gotten back into a fussing habit at bedtime and naptime recently, which I'm chalking up to separation anxiety or just wanting to stay up and play, but who knows. So, I don't want to scare you but just help with expectations - Ferber/CIO doesn't necessarily fix everything forever after a few nights of crying. You may be dealing with this for awhile.
Also, could he be teething? DS got his first teeth around that age.
Post by turtlegirl on Jan 15, 2016 20:38:58 GMT -5
Sorry I haven't responded yet. Saw the tag, but then was at DS1's soccer class and Costco.
For initial bedtime, DS1 cried about 1.5 hours I think. I was our to dinner with a friend (it was my bday) and DH was on baby duty and couldn't get him to sleep at all. So just started Ferber without me. So we stuck with it and it go mich better very quickly. But we did one MOTN feeding until 6 months.
I've got a rule that if it's after 1am then I give the crying a few mins (5-10), and if she's not back asleep then I check on her and change and feed her. She's been sttn for about a week now. But last night she woke up at 130am and wad still crying pretty good at 10mins. So I went in and she had pooped. So changed her, fed her and she went back to sleep until 645am.
Post by turtlegirl on Jan 15, 2016 20:41:16 GMT -5
namasteak - I think you've got a good plan of cio if it's before 6 hours and feeding if it's after.
Good luck! Feel free to message me if you need support when you decide to start.
It always sucks! But most of the time it really gets soooo much better within 3 or r days that you wonder why you were so anxious about it to begin with.
Post by humpforfree on Jan 15, 2016 20:41:46 GMT -5
L was a magical unicorn sleeper and I did CIO at 5 months to get him to fall asleep at night. It took an hour or so for a few nights. I still fed him around 4 or 4:30 am until he was 9 or 10 months. E... I am going to CIO with her soon.. pretty close to 4 months. She is waking up every hour, apparently at the end of each cycle. I need her to connect them again. I will be thrilled if she starts sleeping longer stretches soon and we go back to 1-2 wake ups again. I am fully prepared to nurse her in the mornings like I did with Lane.
Our kids are the same age a mine was up THREE times last night after sleeping through the night all week. It's like they know you're about to break, give you a few good nights to lull you into a false sense of security, and then get it popping again a couple days later....Luckily it was a low key day at work. You have my 'so tired I could die' sympathies.
Anyway, I have no advice, just commiseration. But I appreciate this question because we're starting some sleep training tonight and I don't know WTF I'm doing..
Farmer I love you but I think you just need to feed him. He is still young. You say he can go 12 hours without eating but is that true? I mean ge doesn't skeep 12 hours right, you can just placate him for a bit with a paci or a pat right? I would assume at that age he is hungry.
I know it sucks, my kid is 5.5 months and still wakes to eat. I assume he will for a while. I get the desire for more sleep, but it won't last forever I promise.
I'm here. 4.5 is awful young both for CIO and for STTN with no food. I think both of mine ate once a night until they were close to 1. It sucks. This too shall pass.
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
Post by teatimefor2 on Jan 15, 2016 23:28:26 GMT -5
I'm so sorry, this is a hard stage. I agree with everyone else, but wanted to say hugs.
I say this with love and respect, could you cut back on some activities to get more rest? Maybe the gym or something for a month or two?
With boy boys, I would go nurse them before I went to bed and hope to get a good stretch. If they woke before 7:00 am, I'd nurse them and put them back to bed. At the age, he's still little and is most likely hungry.
DD is 2 and still gets up MOTN to eat. As much as I read that it's a habit, it's not for her. Her stomach has always been tiny. There was a MOOK on here a few months ago that said her older kids still get up to eat MOTN and she offers them sandwiches or something, wish I could remember who. We never did CIO as being described above to help them back to sleep on their own at the end of a sleep cycle because that wasn't her issue. She always falls back asleep, she's just hungry. The longest I've ignored her is probably about 25 minutes and that was only a few weeks ago. If she is not hungry, she will sleep longer like those few magical STTN months she gave us last fall. Until 5 months I was doing the majority of MOTNs which were like 3 a night and then I broke. So then my husband started doing more of them. My mom used to stay with us and she would help too on the weeknights. Three of us trying to get this kid fed through the night, the wake ups were every 3 hours on the dot! I used to try the @this method of cramming as many ounces down the gullet (LOL to that btw) as I could but this didn't work. She would clamp her gums shut when her tummy was full and there was never any way possible to get her to take any more. She drank 4 oz forever and only increased the night time bottle to more than 4 oz at like 20 months.
Good luck, sleep deprivation is terrible. I sometimes secretly wish that my next one is like your first.
Post by dulcemariamar on Jan 16, 2016 2:32:30 GMT -5
At 4.5 months I would feed him especially if it has been a few hours. I would be a bit nervous to ST in case you were also dealing with a 4 month wakeful.
In my experience, it seemed for us that there was a window to ST when it made the process easier. We tried at 9 months and it didn't work because she was very attached to us. Around her first birthday, we did CIO extinction again and the first night was only 30-40 minutes.
So obviously there is a huge variation in what is normal for kids, but I'm going to disagree with the posters who say babies this age probably shouldn't or can't go 12 hours. And obviously different pedis say different things, but our explained it like this and it makes sense to me: once a kid is sleeping regularly for a certain chunk of time, they're biologically capable of going that long without eating - but they'll eat out of habit if you feed them. So if they're well-fed before bed and not going through a growth spurt and they've been going 12 hours without eating, they probably don't need to eat MOTN. And I think farmvillelover is correct that feeding MOTN can be a habit, especially if they learn to eat less during the day because they expect a midnight snack.
With DD, I think she stopped eating MOTN around 4 months, with some gentle encouragement in the form of what @this described above to space out feedings. She basically never started eating MOTN again. With DS, he held onto night needings a little longer due to some growth spurts, but similar tactics had him not hungry at night around 5 or 5.5 months. And I could definitely tell whether they were hungry or just wanted to suck for comfort (but would eat because it's there). If I could go in and rock him for a few moments to calm him, DS wasn't hungry, he just hadn't quite put himself back to sleep yet. If he was hungry, he'd do his hungry cry/scream.
Since farmvillelover's kid hasn't been eating at night, she probably knows the difference between her kid's hungry cry and when he's just fussing, and I don't think starting to feed him MOTN will help anything. I only had to ST DS after he started falling asleep at his bedtime nursing and formed a sleep association with falling asleep at the boob - it was very obvious when he started waking many times at night and wanted to nurse but fell asleep having barely eaten. And he made it very obvious that he needed to eat MOTN after STTN for weeks during a massive growth spurt, but a week later the growth spurt was over and he would have happily kept eating or comfort nursing at 3am indefinitely.
Anyway, you know your baby, just listen to what they're telling you and it'll be ok.
1 hour, with Ferber checks, last Sunday. We want him to fall asleep on his own. Hes 14 months. We generally hold him/bottle and he soon fall asleep after that. He does ok overnight. A failed attempt to do sleep training. We were going to try last night, but poor DS has ear infection #5 (in 3 months).
Lurker here, but just chiming in because we went through a similar situation. DS1 is also a unicorn sleeper- STTN at 8 weeks and literally has woken up MOTN only a handful of times since. DS2 on the other hand, was a much more challenging sleeper and it was incredibly difficult to adjust my sleep expectations! In our case, DS2 was waking up to around 2-3 am, I would feed him, and he would go back down until 6ish. We halfheartedly tried CIO at 4-5ish months but I didn't feel quite comfortable considering how young he was. Once DS2 hit 6ish months he started eating more solids and was able to go slightly longer- maybe 4am before he would wake up. Then, the very first night he slept through the night was right after he ate an entire avocado plus some other purees for dinner. So, we concluded that he probably actually was hungry during those MOTN wakeups and we just had to wait until we could get more calories in him (and he would NOT have taken more out of a bottle- he would refuse after 5oz or so) in the form of solid food to last him through the night. After that, we started giving him as much food at dinner as we could and he started STTN pretty reliably. Now, he is still not the great sleeper that DS1 is- we cannot transfer him from napping in the car to crib without waking him like we can with DS1 and he wakes up when someone walks in his room, etc. But, I am trying to tell myself that I will appreciate that he's not a deep sleeper when he's older and I am trying to get him off in the mornings :? Hope our experience is helpful and encouraging. Hang in there, you are doing great!
Post by WillabyWallabyWu on Jan 16, 2016 8:58:29 GMT -5
I'm so sorry you're feeling badly. Sleep is so hard to figure out for some kids. I think you've gotten some good advice from others, so I'll just share my experience to (hopefully) give you a light at the end of the tunnel.
My son was a "feed every three hours around the clock" kid for almost 6 months. He had a host of health issues that left me with a ton of mommy guilt for letting him cry for longer than 10 minutes, so he got very used to eating throughout the night. But he was eating 3 times overnight, every single night. When he got down to once a night I was so excited. I felt like a human again during the day. Then he started back to 2-3 times a night and I was so done. We started co sleeping so he could nurse and I could sleep. But, he's a terrible co-sleeper. Nobody was getting good sleep with that either. It was so frustrating.
Between 6 and 9 months we had overnight travel planned at least once a month, and I didn't want to make our family and friends listen to a crying baby while we visited them, so we waited until 9.5 months to seep train and night wean. It took him almost 2 weeks to actually sleep through the night, but he only cried for an hour one night. One hour was my limit and I went in to rock him that one time.
Now-here's the light at the end of the tunnel-since 10 months (he's 22 months today) he has slept 12-15 hours overnight. He still takes a 2 hour nap every day too! The only times he wakes at night now is when he is sick, and it's kind of nice to know that he does need me still MOTN every once in a while.
You're bottle feeding, right? Have you already tried slowly reducing the amount he eats overnight? We basically did what @this did, down to super tiny bottles (.5 oz) over the course of several weeks. I was nursing plus supplementing but my supply was very low, so she wasn't eating much from me. By the time we were down to small feeds, she'd nurse for a few minutes, drink a tiny bottle and pass back out. This made MOTN so much less hassle. I felt like I barely had to wake up myself. We did eventually Ferber when her sleep went to crap but the fact that she largely wasn't waring overnight made me feel a lot better. As for how long she cried, I think it was an hour
Post by moopoint17 on Jan 16, 2016 12:39:32 GMT -5
I tried it with ds2 and he cried for 3 hours. He fell asleep for 20 and started crying again. I couldn't do it anymore so I brought him into bed with me.
You do whatever you feel is right for you and your family.
We did Ferber method (cry with scheduled checks) at that age, but only to get her to self-soothe to sleep. Up to that point, she'd been needing to nurse to sleep and then would wake and scream forever when I'd put her back in the crib. I know she was definitely eating at least once MOTN at that age, and for quite a while really. I didn't mind that, as long as I could put her back in the crib and she'd go back to sleep right away. We all got a lot more sleep after doing Ferber, and it only took a day or two. I've got my Ferber book pulled up on the Kindle and it says (regarding the age of 3 or 4 months): "At this age most infants have "settled", which means they are now sleeping through most of the night, at least from a feeding late at night to one in the early morning". and "Its entirely reasonable to cut back to two nighttime feedings by the time your child is two or three months of age, one feeding by three or four months, and none at all at five months. Many children give up nighttime feedings altogether around the age of three or four months; basically no normal, healthy full-term babies still require a nighttime feeding when they are five months old and you can certainly insist on stopping them altogether at that point if you want to." He goes on to say there's nothing wrong with continuing nighttime feedings after 5 months if you enjoy it but it is a choice not a biological requirement. He talks a bit about determining if they're actually hungry by noting whether they're just using the breast/bottle as a pacifier or are they actually hungrily eating? All that to say, I think, in your situation I'd do Ferber with checks and accept the fact of 1 night time feeding for another month or so, then re-evaluate. By that point he should be much more accustomed to his new sleeping environment and better able to put himself back to sleep if he wakes. Good luck!
One MOTN wake up at that age is pretty normal esp if he will go back to sleep right after he eats. Around 6 months we slowly weaned DS off his MOTN feed by nursing for shorter periods of time (if bottle feeding - smaller amounts of milk/formula) until the session was eliminated. Letting the baby cry that long isn't getting anyone more sleep either so I would just feed since it works and gets everyone the most amount of sleep.
Post by imimahoney on Jan 16, 2016 15:31:16 GMT -5
My daughter didn't need to eat over night either and would sleep through her motn feeding often but I still fed her when she woke since her calories weren't dispersed equally through the day yet.
Once she was older and taking larger bottles, maybe around 5.5 months and 6 oz bottles we started to reduced her motn bottle and make her other bottles larger.
Since he's only 4.5 months I'd probably ditch the paci for night time sleep but still feed. Once he's older by a month or so then I'd feel out night weaning him.
I hope it's an easy transition. It's so hard on little sleep.