My 11 week old son wakes at 2am every morning but will settle back to sleep if given a dummy, but continues to wake in the night. Should I feed him?
My 11 week son is causing me grief during the night. He has slowly become a very good sleeper, sleeping exactly at the times the CLB routines suggest. I don’t have to even encourage him to sleep at these times. He has adjusted to the CLB feeding schedule; he is not necessarily consistent with the amounts he takes though. I make him 5 scoops of formula to 150ml water, and sometimes he takes all of it, sometimes leaving between 1 and 2 ounces. Despite the amount he drinks during the day, he always wakes at 2am. For more than 1 month now, I have not fed him at this feed, but give him a dummy, and he then will sleep until sometime between 3 and 4. Until recently, he was breast fed at this night interval, but then he started going off his morning feed, maybe only taking 1 or 2 ounces. So, I have not been feeding him in the night, instead, I have settled him with the dummy. I did try water, but that did not work, he was greatly offended! At any rate, the new pattern has become waking at 2am, dummy, waking again for 3-4am, dummy, waking between 5-6am, dummy then he would happily sleep until 8:30am, if I let him. As soon as I give the dummy (he is quite hungry so takes it eagerly) he falls straight back to sleep.
This current pattern has been in place for about 4 days, and has been exactly the same. Yesterday, he woke at 9pm starving hungry, I gave him 5oz, and then at 11pm he took a further 5ozs. So, yesterday, he had, (if you count the fact that 5 powder scoops and 150 mls actually make 6 ounces) between 30 and 35 ounces of formula. So, I think he is getting enough, but this night waking thing is killing me as I have not had a decent sleep for ages, and I have a 2.5 year old toddler as well, who slept though the night at 8 weeks.
Would you have any suggestions? I tried for a week the split feed at 10-11pm, but it had no affect whatsoever on the night waking. He seems to take more formula if I give this late feed as a dream feed and is happier. It was always 2am, even though he has not been fed at that time for more than a month, and goes straight back down with a dummy. I have tried a few times to see if he’ll settle himself back to sleep, but he just keeps on crying. He does settle himself at other times, so I don’t worry that he cannot settle himself on his own. I’m just torn about whether this is some ingrained habit, or whether he just needs a feed in the night, despite it putting him off his morning feed.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. The sleeping schedule below is for his current evening routine with the waking, avoiding the night feed with a dummy, and him subsequently going back to sleep. We really don’t have a period where he is awake, but he is more wakeful between 5am and 6am, presumably because he’s hungry and he’s more difficult to settle without feeding.
My son takes between 110-150mls at 7.30am, 10.30am, 2.30pm, 5.15pm and 10.45pm. At 6.30pm he takes 4 scoops of formula in 150mls water and may leave 30mls.
He weighs 6.25kg [13.12lbs].
My son naps at 9-9.45am, 12-2.15pm and 4-4.30pm. He settles by 7pm.
Your son’s sudden hunger in the evening could be due to a growth spurt which often occurs around the twelfth week. To allow for this, you may need to increase the amount of formula he takes at some feeds during the day.
The amount of water used in making up a feed is the guide for calculating the volume of formula you give your son at each feed and for gauging his overall daily intake. Since adding the powder will increase the volume it is easy to think of the bottle as being larger than it is in reality. At your son’s weight he should be having around 34ozs [1000mls] a day. Your son is taking 150mls [5ozs] bottles. If he drinks all his bottles each day he will getting about this amount but, as he regularly leaves an ounce at most feeds, you can see that he will be a little down on the amount of actual formula he needs.
One of the reasons for using the split feed at 10pm/11pm is that most babies under the age of 4 months need to have some time awake between 7.30pm and 7am. If you start to wake your baby at 9.45pm he should be well awake by 10pm/10.10pm and happy to take at least two-thirds of his feed. Keeping him awake, by being in a light room with some background noise and allowing him some quiet kicking time, should mean you can offer him the rest of his feed and possibly an extra 1-2ozs at 11.15pm. By the time he is settled back to sleep he will have been awake well over an hour. This should help him settle into a longer sleep during the middle of the night. At present, by dream feeding him, he is being more restless in the night as he will have slept for a long stretch after going down at 7pm. This is explained on page 138 of The Contented Little Baby Book.
Your son may be beginning to associate falling back to sleep with sucking on his dummy. If he was hungry in the night he would be far less likely to go back to sleep for another hour. But by 5am/6am he is showing signs of hunger, so you could offer a small feed when he first wakes, treating it as a night feed, and settling him back as soon as possible to sleep until 7.30am. When you wake him at 7.30am he may take a smaller feed having fed earlier. Once he is sleeping properly during the night he should begin to push on to nearer 7am and so not need the earlier feed. Dropping all night feeds too soon will lead to a baby not sleeping well in the night which may have a knock on effect by day.
If a baby is restless because of hunger between 5am/6am it is far better to feed him straight away, and get him back to sleep quickly, than have to constantly go in and replace a dummy until nearer 7am.
Make sure your son is firmly tucked in as this will prevent him from disturbing himself through his Moro reflex. This may still be strong and cause him to wake when in a light sleep. Use a cotton sheet and thin cotton blanket stretched lengthways across him and secured on each side of the cot using rolled towels. If your son is wearing a sleeping bag make sure this is lightweight [0.5tog] which will allow you to use coverings without the risk of him becoming overheated.
By keeping him awake for a longer time at 10pm/11pm, offering a slightly larger split feed at this time of night and tucking him in well you may find your son is less restless during night. Consider whether he does associate his dummy with falling asleep and you may decide it is time to get rid of it. Going “cold turkey” at this age should not take as long as it would if he was older and had become more reliant on his dummy both at night and to settle to naps during the day.
There is a helpful case study about dummy withdrawal on page 82 of The Complete Sleep Guide.