sleeping through dillema

[lucyp]

Bub has starting randomly sleeping through the night from about 7:30ish to between 5-6am in the morning. ( I know , I know - thats good)

This started when I put his dummy in while I prepared a bottle in the middle of the night and by the time I came back he was asleep. Now when he stirs at around 130-2:30 I put dummy in and he drifts off again. Occassionally he will restir in 1 hour in which I put dummy in again and occassionally he does not stir at all unitl 5-6am!

However I am a little torn - as he is not the biggest of bubbies and weight gain is not on the spectacular side. He is on 4 feeds during the day and has just started rice cereal .

I am sure if I gave him his "wee hours" bottle that he would take it.... what to do ??????????? :confused:

[drewid]

Hey there

Not sure how old your bub is, but I tend to believe that if my son goes back to sleep when i give him his dummy in the middle of the night, that he didn't wake up out of hunger. If he's hungry, he just won't go back to sleep, or if he does, it is just a doze for a few minutes then wakes up crying again.

My son is 5 months old and sometimes sleeps right through the night, probably once or twice a fortnight. Most nights he will wake up around 2/3ish and five times out of ten its for a feed. The rest of the time just giving him the dummy will send him back to sleep.

I don't believe in waking him up, or keeping him from a peaceful sleep, to offer him food that he doesn't really want is the way to go. If he was really hungry, he'd let me know.

BUT thats only cos Andrew is 5 months - definitely when he was younger it was a different story!

[JJsMamma]

Hi! I breastfeed so Im not able to say with confidence but perhaps you could try to give him extra during the day to make up for what he doesnt get if he sleeps on at night? Not sure how much your bottle (as amount in mls) is but you could divide it up and give say for example (100ml bottle divided into 5 feeds) the extra 20mls at each feed. That way in your mind he hasnt missed out on the extra food? Of course this only works if he will take the extra... I tend to agree with Nicole79's post about if he is hungry surely he will wake. But in saying that I think it also depends on how assertive your baby is. Anyway hope this helps, Amanda

[Chickadee]

In a short answer: Whatever you decide to do is the best thing. You know your bub best and are the only one in a position to best judge his needs, which may change daily. So trust your instinct.

It sounds like he's satisfied with just his dummy and probably doesn't need a night time bottle anymore. Generally this happens around 6 months, some bubs earlier, some much later. If you choose to drop the night time bottle, there may be some nights where you choose to give a bottle anyways, say if he hasn't eatten/drunk much during the day, is waking repeatedly, isn't feeling well or whatever reason. And that will be the right thing to do too. Bub's needs really do change daily to weekly, and I think the best advice for mums is that they need to be flexible, especially in the first year when so much growing and development is happening.

If you choose to keep keep giving a night time bottle then that's ok too and certainly won't hurt him. If you go this route you may notice eventually that he's not as hungry for his breakfast and can reconsider then about night time bottles.

[lucyp]

thanks girls for the advice. Although bub is 6months old - I think I knew already what you were saying, in that if he was really hungry - a dummy would not cut it and he would rewake. I'll just play it by instinct for the moment :) TA :)