What am I doing wrong? Feeding / sleeping Q

Noah is 20 weeks tomorrow and I suspect we are in the middle of the big growth spurt <sob>

During the day, he feeds every 2.5 - 4 hours and usually sleeps after being awake for 2 hours, but has no kind of nap routine. This hasn't changed. At night he also usually feeds every 3 hours, but this has changed. We have started putting him to bed upstairs for the last week and generally he settles quite well and sleeps for 3-4 hours before waking for a feed between 11 and 12 when I go to bed.

After that though he is waking every hour and a half. last night it was 20 minutes of waking and wriggling, 20 minutes of feeding when he wouldn't re-settle, 29 minutes of settling back to sleep, 20 minutes of sleep, and start again... Suffice to say I feel like a zombie today.

Does this just sound like a growth spurt? Do i just grin and bear it til it passes and hope that's soon? Or am I giving in and feeding too quickly at night? I do try to settle him before automatically feeding, but it rarely semms to work.

Any thoughts?

TIA

I alway fed to settle back to sleep, still do now at 13 months (although no longer BF'ing). I'm not sure of any other way to do it!

We started weaning at 21 weeks. It didn't make him sleep through, but it certainly improved it. This was after the GS started at 16 weeks and never stopped, I felt like death by the time we decided to wean!

I always fed back to sleep. I always had great intentions of trying to settle in other ways but whenever it got to 3am it was far easier to get my boobs out than try to shush/pat!

It sounds like classic growth spurt/developmental spurt behaviour. It's rough but it will pass

H xx

This sounds very similar to what we're going through at the minute and I don't think there's any magic solution sadly. H always tries to resettle her first, sometimes this works, but if she doesn't go off quite quickly then I end up feeding her as it's the easiest thing to do.

9 weeks and counting here....

Urgh, grin and bear it then I suppose

A minimum of 6 weeks to weaning yet and am not placing any hopes on that esp as we want to do BLW so might be ages before he eats anything anyway.

This too shall pass..........

soundslike sarah!i gave in and stsrted weaning at 21weeks! didn't help for the first week but it isnow. it went on for so long tho that she got in the habit of waking but now i can rock her back down for the most part and she s startiing to wake less again! whether its due to the end of the growth spurt or the food i don't know tho!!

O is a week behind N and it sounds pretty similar here.

He has been sleeping through the night, but the last week or so things have gone a bit haywire, and last night, 2am seemed the best time for him to be wide awake. He was absolutely shrieking with laughter while pulling at my eyes/ears/nose/mouth, sticking his fingers in my eyes/ears/nose mouth and generally being a right PITA that refused point blank to sleep.
Food is and was the only answer, which is odd, as like N, he had fallen into a pattern of feed/be awake for 1.5-2hrs, sleep and repeat every 2.5-4 hours or so.

I'm putting it down to GS and the fact that he's having a bit of a development spurt atm too.

*this too shall pass*

Have you tried giving him water at night Smarties? We tried this trick with Louie. He started to wake at midnight having gone down at 8pm, then every 2hours. We did automatically give him a bottle but a friend said try water. He has prob 3-4 sucks on the teat and he's asleep again. Pop in the dummy and back to his cot. It's worked for us as he has now got out of the wanting a feed every time he wakes in the night. If the water dummy trick doesn't work we give him a feed but he only really wakes at 3-4am now.

Worth a try?

Sounds v.familiar here too - I suspect it's prob still growth spurt territory. It's a killer tho - I've got no words of wisdom, altho it will get better.

My first tip would be to stop counting.  Stop clock watching and notching up the wake ups, seriously it feels a hell of a lot worse when you KNOW you've been up 6 times rather than thinking you've been up a few times.

I really do feel your pain, we stuck in the 16 week gs for ever but it's slowly getting better, well it would be if it wasn't for his eczema but that's a seperate issue.  In my experience weaning doesn't help.

this too shall pass...

Lots of "this too shall pass" vibes for you lovely. And cake. And chocolate.

Ugh sounds really hard

Not sure I can offer much help really but I hope it gets better really soon.

Is co-sleeping an option for you at all? I find that J can go about 5 or 6 hrs between feeds in the night but I cant always settle him in his cot when he wakes after 2 hrs or so. So I bring him in with us and he usually goes back to sleep. I am working on the principle that he doesn't need milk and therefore I hope he will grow out of the waking and not settling thing rather than expecting a feed to get back to sleep IYSWIM?

Good luck and 'this too shall pass'

KB3 - I haven't tried water no. I thought I wasn't supposed to give him anything other than breastmilk to be honest so haven't even considered that approach.

GA - not really to co-sleeping. Our bed isn't big enough for me, N, H and his bl@@dy bolster pillow he insists on sleeping on I do sometimes bring him into bed for his morning feed though.

Hannah - yes fair point!

Hi Smarties,

I posted similar woes the other day and you gave me some good advice and reassurance.

It's so hard, but keep going and it will pass.  You told me "Repeat after me, only 6 weeks to go".

Penfold xo.

thanks Penfold, ah how sleep deprivation can addle the mind eh? Had totally forgotten that, but now I remember

How are you getting on?