the most amazing feeling is when you wake up in the morning and realize you haven’t been up in the night to feed! you wonder….is he/she okay? is this a complete fluke? will this beautiful thing never happen again? there is often a certain level of anxiety that mom’s have when they go to bed, because they are already wondering when they are going to be woken up to feed. i hate this and therefore i try and get rid of the night feedings as soon as possible! some mom’s say they don’t mind getting up in the night….i don’t buy this, not for a second!!
there are some things you can do to try and decrease the amount of night feedings and as the ultimate goal get rid of them all together. first of all you know your baby better than anyone else. you know if they seem to be waking and just looking for your attention or if they are truly eating/hungry. if you have a preemie baby, or a baby under weight, your doctor tells you to keep feeding in the night etc., follow the guidelines for your babies’ needs. like i said, i am not a doctor, i am just a regular mom who has come up with some tactics that work for me. that being said you know your baby better than anyone else and have to take what you want from my blog and do what you feel is right.
hudson was waking 2 times a night, on average, from birth until 16 weeks. around weeks 14 and 15 i started to notice a pattern for the first waking. he usually woke around 2 am and he seemed to just play around on one boob and fall asleep within a matter of seconds. i, of course, would wake him and force him to eat both sides, worried that he would be hungry an hour later and wake again. this didn’t seem to help and regardless he would wake for his second feeding around 5 am. after 2 weeks of this i smartened up and decided to take action. if he could sleep all night everyone would be more rested. it was time! so, when he woke at 2 am i had my husband go to him to try and soothe him. i knew if hudson stopped crying and went back to sleep with him, then he wasn’t hungry. if he kept screaming than i would feed him and re-assess the situation. so we did just this and hudson stopped crying, my husband laid him back down once he was drowsy/asleep. hudson of course, woke up but we stuck to our plan to let him cry it out and see what happened. this wasn’t easy and to make matters worse i had my husband laying next to me not liking any part of it! he supported the process as he had seen hudson’s results from the sleep training and how he not only went to sleep on his own at 4:30 pm for the night, but also how happy he was since he was a well rested baby. so we lay there at 2 am listening to little hudson, pissed as can be. he managed to cry for 45 minutes and then miraculously went to sleep and didn’t wake until 5 am!! walllah!!! what you get from this is, that you know your baby better than anyone else. you know when they are ready to make certain steps/changes. you need to go with your gut! the only reason hudson was crying at 2 am when i didn’t go to him was because we had created a habit to go to him when he woke and he was looking for my company to soothe him back to sleep. there wasn’t a real need to go in.
the next night he woke again at 2 am, just like clockwork!! we repeated the steps with my husband going in, etc. and hudson cried once my husband put him back down, but for only 20 minutes. a 50% decrease in time! again he went to sleep and didn’t wake until morning, 5:30 am!!!
the next night he again wakes at 2 am but this time no tears!! just chats and chats for about 40 minutes and goes back to sleep until the morning!! from this point on he sleeps all night, with occasional wakings but chats himself back to sleep!
so, i suggest you try some of these tactics if you feel your baby is ready to sleep through the night or if they are waking many times in the night and you want to decrease the number! good luck and please feel free to contact me by email on my contact page if you privately want to discuss your situation!