Feeding FAQ: 0-8 weeks – Formula Feeding

Do we wake my 4 week daughter for the 10.30pm feed?

I am trying desperately to get my daughter into your routines. She is pretty good and we usually manage for her to have roughly the right amount of sleep during the day.

Feeds are a bit hit and miss, the times are fine but how much she will take at each feed varies. At nighttime, we give her a split feed around 5-7pm and then settle her at 7pm in her cot. She will sometimes wake up on her own around 10-10.30pm but sometimes she will sleep on until 11 or even later. Should we be waking her up at 1030 if she does not wake on her own? Surely if she feeds at 10.30pm rather than 11pm then she will wake earlier in the night?

She usually sleeps from 11pm-2am and then wakes for a feed, then wakes again around 5am for another feed. She demands a lot of food in the night (last night at 2am she had 5oz – any less than this and I cannot settle her). She doesn’t feed very well at 11pm although we have tried keeping her up for longer and changing her etc to try and keep her awake. She is quite difficult to settle after the 5am feed and then does not feed well at 7am.
She feeds at 7am 3oz, 10am 4oz, 2pm 4oz, 5pm 2oz, 6.15pm 3oz, 11pm 3oz, 2am 4oz, 5.45am 2.5oz. She weighs 7lbs 10ozs.
She naps at 9-10am, 11.30-2pm, and 4-5pm.

The reason that a baby is woken around 10.30pm is to encourage the longest stretch of sleep to fall in the middle of the night. If you were to let her sleep on at this time she may wake at midnight and then again at 5am. Unless you are prepared to stay awake until midnight you will be up twice in the night. At present, you are still having to feed at 2am and 5am/6am which is totally normal for a baby of this age and weight. She will continue to want a full feed in the middle of the night for several weeks more, but should begin to stretch out the time of it to later as she gets bigger.

If you begin to cut back on the middle of the night feed too soon you will not get her sleeping on until nearer 7am which is the aim. See page 155 of The Contented Little Baby Book.

To sleep a longer stretch in the middle of the night your daughter needs to be awake long enough to feed well at 10pm/10.30pm. Many babies can be sleepy at this feed. The best way to deal with this is to wake them earlier, before they have fallen into a deep sleep. This usually happens after 10pm if they are asleep by 7pm.

It can take a while to wake a sleeping baby, so start early. Go into her room at 9.45pm and switch on the lights, undo her swaddling and remove any covers on her. Busy yourself in the room and go across to her from time to time. As she starts to stir, encourage her by stroking her forearms and talking to her in a normal, not hushed, voice.

Look at page 86 of The Contented Little Baby Book for a question and answer about using the split feed at this time. There is also a description of it on page 138 of the same book.

Your daughter does not take a very big feed at 5am so hunger could be the cause of her not settling well. This feed can be a full one and then the baby settled back to sleep until 7.30am when they receive a smaller top-up feed to get them through to 10am. A lot of babies seem to prefer to do this in the early weeks. Treat the 5am/6am feed as a night time one, keeping eye contact to the minimum, the lights low and only changing her if it is absolutely necessary.

Use the routines as a guide to work towards. Your baby may be happier on an earlier routine and not ready to move on to the one for her age until another week or so. This often happens and, as long as your baby seems content when awake and is settling easily and sleeping well, then follow the timings which seem to suit her needs best.