Save my Sanity!!

[ahayden1230]

Does anyone have a Breastfed baby that is sleeping 5 and 6 hour stretches at nignt? My LO will be 8 weeks on saturday and he still wakes every 1.5 hours to eat at nignt... Can anyone give me advice about this.... I'm sure it wi continue?? Just wondering everyone's experienxe. How old was your BF baby when you started getting longer stretches?? He won't take pacifier and I'm wondering if that has something to do with it. I love nursing dont get me wrong just seeking more sleep!! Lol..... Someone save my sanity.

[melody330]

Sorry - no help here. My 13 month old sleeps 7-2am and then is up every 90 minutes until 7am. This is a recent development. As of a few weeks ago he slept 7-12am, then up every two hours until 7am.

Look up safe bed sharing if you are having trouble getting up every time. Every baby is different, but there really is nothing you can do at this point besides bed share to get more sleep. You just have to roll with it!

ETA - I guess I might have a little advice.

Sometimes it helped DS when he was that young to do a good cluster feeding between 5pm - 10pm.  He would be nice and content and usually give me a three hour stretch when he was 8 weeks old.  

Go to bed when LO goes to sleep!

Have your SO get up and bring you LO in bed.  Nurse first side, and give LO back to SO to change diaper & swaddle up. have SO bring baby back to you, and nurse the other side.  Give LO back to SO so they can put baby back in whatever they sleep in.  I would literally never get out of bed in the MOTN when LO was that young.  DH was working, and I didn't give a shit if he was tired in the morning.  He got his ass up and helped, and god bless that man he never complained once!

White noise and swaddling helped us a lot

[ellabee]

How does your daytime sleep look? Things changed for us when I really started trying to follow the "time in between naps" recommendation here: link

I would make sure LO got a full feeding (at least both sides until she popped her self off), do awake time, then start putting her down for a nap ~10 minutes before the "awake interval" was up. Then as we got closer to the end of the day, she would tank up during the witching hrs and have her longest awake interval before going down between 7:30-8:30. A little after 8 weeks she was doing a 6-7hr block of sleep before waking and feeding 2-3 more times at night. I went to sleep immediately after she went down. It's important to make sure you're doing full feeding sessions, not just snacks and falling asleep on the boob. We made that mistake early on until the LC corrected it. DD was a "snacker"and would fall asleep after getting only a few oz, then wake up hungry not too long after. It wasn't a great cycle because she was always tired and hungry. Also, DD never took a pacifier either.

Agree with melody330 about the night time routine. That's exactly what we did too.

[haybaleinthemiddle]

My DS woke up every two hrs until we night weaned at around 13 months. We had tried everything including supplementing with extra BM stash before bed. He never so much as slept three hrs at a time. So I feel your pain.

Anyway we ended up sidecar-ing our crib so I didn't have to get up at night which was a lifesaver.

[saraml13]

DS started sleeping more consistently around 7-8 weeks. He would pretty reliably sleep a 6 hour stretch and then a 3 hour stretch. What seemed to work for us was: swaddle, white noise, and feeding as much as possible in the evenings.

DS is now almost 5 months. Since I went back to work at 13 weeks, he hasn't been sleeping as well. I think it is a combination of getting several colds from daycare, 4 month sleep regression, and a bit of reverse cycling.

[doglover31]

No help here. DS will be 6 months next week and is still waking every 2-3 hours at night to eat. Every now and then he will do a 4-6 hour stretch but it's rare.

[ahayden1230]

I feel better knowing I'm not the only one and that we could be in this for the long haul!! He acts like he is starving during out MOTN feedings eating his hands and rooting his head around like a mad man!! Sometimes it's hard to get a latch because he is so worked up! Wondering if that's normal....

[esd]

I'm no help - my 13 month old is still up every 3 hours at night. The only thing that helps is that he's still in our room so I don't have far to go.

[mully626]

ellabee had some great advice. I think that my kiddos good nighttime sleep has a lot to do with me really trying to get their calories in them during the day. I made sure to wake them to feed every 2-3 hours at most all day long and would try cluster feeding in the evening.

DD2 won't take a pacifier either so I feel your pain on that one.

[bsquaredmsquared]

DS woke up frequently throughout the first 3 months with the exception of 2 long nights. At 13 weeks when he started daycare, we started to get longer stretches. Every night varies so there are still unpredictable wake ups every night.

[fish8412]

I have an 11 month old who still doesn't sleep through the night. It's always something...teething, growth spurt, hitting a major milestone, sick, etc. Try to remind yourself that this isn't permanent and your baby needs you!

[jesster88]

8 weeks was a bit of a turning point for us. DS started having a consistent bedtime of 7:30-8 so we started a bedtime routine and 10pm dream feed. Then he usually wakes up at 2 and 5 to eat before waking up for the day at 7am. We also do eat, play, sleep and he only recently stopped cluster feeding in the evenings. His daytime naps became terrible around the time he started sleeping better at night do you win some you lose some.

[natsgirl]

Every baby is different. I'm not sure if there's anything you can do to really change it. My 11-day old cluster feeds a lot during the day but started sleeping for 3-4 hour stretches overnight (with "night" starting at 11pm).

[Libby]

We are 14 weeks here. LO does a 3 hr most nights then up every 1.5 hours. Part of our problem is reflux though. Good luck to you! If anything I feel like my body is adjusting better to the lack of sleep as time goes on

[Sparkly]

Honestly, I feel every baby is different when it comes to sleep and nursing. I do not have a good sleeper. She is 14 months and still wakes up 2-4 times a night and usually wants to nurse at least 1 or 2 of those. We cosleep and bed share and we've attempted gentle night weaning a couple times to no avail. It didn't feel right, didn't feel like she or we were ready so we stopped.

All this to say, I know what you're going through! It's SO hard! Hang in there. You will get through this tough phase, and maybe have a breakthrough, or maybe another tough phase will come along. I feel think everything is normal. I know people with babies who STTN very early (a month or two - supposedly, I mean I haven't been to their houses;) ) and others who didn't and nursed or bedshare until 2 or 2 1/2 or beyond.

I will add, even the early rockstar sleepers have regressions - illness, growth spurts, travel, all kinds of things can throw sleep off. I almost prefer just being used to the crappy sleep every night. My friends with similarly aged babies that are used to good sleep have such a hard time with the hiccups.

Good luck mama!

[nursefrizz]

Here are some things that seemed to help DD around that age.:
Getting good naps during the day. If I wasn't careful and let her get overtired during the day, it just carried over to nighttime & she wouldn't sleep as well.

Swaddling! We actually didn't start swaddling until about 8 weeks, because she seemed to hate it until that point.

White noise machine plus music. I turn her white noise machine on low (it's a cricket sound) and then have lullabies playing on a timer for about an hour and a half. Once the music turns off the crickets are still going, so her room is never completely silent. This is key for her haha