My son of almost 5mths has been waking and sometimes screaming between 5 and 5.30am for the past month
For the past month my son who is almost 5mths wakes up between 5 and 5.30am.Most of the time he cries for a few minutes and goes back to sleep. Sometimes he will scream for about 30minutes. He will then wake up again around 6.15-6.40pm and yells on and off until we go in at 7am.
I am pretty sure that it is not hunger as he stops crying the minute I go in at 7am to turn the light on. Also I sometimes have a struggle to get him to finish his 7am bottle.
He sleeps in a sleeping bag, it is still dark during these hours at the moment and I don’t know what to do. I go in every 15minutes to pat him but this sometimes makes him cry even louder.
My son feeds at 7.10am 7ozs, 10.45am 7ozs, 2.30pm 7ozs, 6.15pm 8ozs, and 10pm 6ozs. He drinks 1oz of water at 4.15pm.
He naps at 8.55-9.15am, 12-2pm and 4.30-4.45pm. He settles at 6,45pm.
If you don’t feel that hunger is causing your baby to stir in the early morning then look at the other possible reasons for his early morning waking.
- Check that he is not too cold, or too warm. If he is using a sleeping bag then still continue to tuck him in. Use a lightweight [0.5tog] one so you can stretch a cotton sheet and cotton blanket, if needed, lengthways across him. Make sure that this is secured down the cot sides using rolled up towels.
- Does your central heating or hot water system come on just before he is waking? As your son is mostly waking briefly and then falling back to sleep it would seem that something may be disturbing his light sleep which occurs at this point in the night.
On the mornings when your son cries for longer it would be sensible to offer him a feed and get him back to sleep again. Leave him for 10 minutes when he first wakes to see if he will settle again and then offer him a feed. You can then settle him back to sleep until 7am/7.30am and offer him a smaller top up feed at that time to keep his daytime feeding on track. Make sure you treat any early feeds as night time ones so have as little light in the room as possible, no eye contact and only change him if it is really needed.
Try moving your baby’s late evening feed on to 10.30pm/11pm. Until a baby is sleeping through every night to 7am for at least a week it is sensible to keep this late evening feed in place. This may help him to stay asleep in the early morning, and to rule out hunger as the reason for his early waking .
You have noticed that your son is not so hungry for his 7am feed. By this age babies are not ravenously hungry as soon as they wake. Unless he is crying with hunger as soon as he wakes wait until 7.20/7.30am before offering him his feed. If he does seem hungry as soon as he wakes, offer him half his feed then allow him to have a break of 10-15minutes before offering him the second half.