3.5moM still wakes up 2-3 times a night to eat. Is this normal?

[aguest000]

The most he’s ever slept consecutively its 6 hours. Most nights he wakes up every 3-4 hours to eat and passes right back out. Wondering if anyone else has had luck with achieving longer stretches?

 

[nablusstar]

@aguest000 Very very normal. It will get worse, then get better, then get worse again and so on.

 

[readerjoseph]

@aguest000 Hi there, childbirth educator here

This is incredibly normal and very healthy. I know it's hard, but the frequent waking is actually a protective factor against SIDS. Babies who wake 2 to 3 times in the night or are awoken 2 - 3 times in the night are less likely to pass from SIDS because it keeps them from getting into too deep of a sleep state to wake themselves when something goes wrong like an apnea event. It is also a risk reduction for SIDS for babies to sleep in the same room as another person for at least the first 6 months of life as they regulate their breathing to the breathing of the other person and it is another signal to their immature brains to keep breathing while sleeping and they naturally sleep lighter so are less likely to enter the deeper disordered sleep state.

Until 6 months of age when their brains have matured enough to reliably sleep and breathe and keep all their bodily functions going for stretches longer than 4 hours, they shouldn't be induced to sleep longer than 4 hours.

Hang in there, I promise you will sleep again. If you need a break, I highly recommend finding a postpartum doula who provides 'night angel's services where they come in during the sleeping hours and tend to baby, bring baby to you if you are breastfeeding and otherwise take over for the night shift. This type of service varies, can be scheduled for a few nights in a row for a break or weekly like Thursdays the night angel comes - it can often be adapted to specifically what works for your family.

Wishing you the best.

 

[mardbein]

@readerjoseph Hi, I'm not OP, but I have a question if you don't mind! My baby is 4.5 months. Right now she's in the 4 month sleep regression, but before sleep got terrible, she didn't sleep through the night but would wake up 2-3 times. If she sleeps on her own more than 4 hours, without us doing any sleep training or anything, is that fine? We comfort her when she wakes and feed her if it's been more than 3 hours, rock her back to sleep if she had eaten recently,but sometimes just on her own she would do 5 or 6 hours (definitely never longer than that).

 

[readerjoseph]

@mardbein Hi there! So, I can tell you that statistically the most dangerous time for SIDS is considered 2-4 months. To be clear tho, I am not a sleep specialist or a sleep doctor, I am a doula and a childbirth educator so while I spend a lot of my time reading and learning about many many topics, nothing is a replacement for your pediatricians advice that is tailored to your baby. With that disclaimer, the windows I have seen across many, many studies, generally works out to a pattern of wake every 2 hours for 0-2 months, every 3 hours from 2-4 months, and every 4 hours from 4-6 months for the tightest of margins. So, my suggestion is to take this framework and talk to your pediatrician and make adjustments based on their recommendations for your baby, your baby's feeding habits and natural wake cycles, and your baby's health status.

Always contact your pediatrician before making big changes to sleeping habits, feeding habits, etc and discuss what is appropriate for your baby.

If baby doesn't wake themselves, they should be awoken, according to the general consensus of scientific studies, because babies from 0-6 months especially are not built with enough stomach volume to go much outside the framework above. There will be variation, but biologically babies are meant to eat around the clock. Also, that deep sleep pattern that may be contributory to SIDS risk is thought to be a similar pathway that suppresses the hunger cue from waking the baby - it isn't necessarily that the baby isn't hungry, it could be that their hunger cue is not strong enough to overcome the deep sleep pattern to rouse themselves.

I hope this helps, please don't hesitate to ask further questions!

Wishing you the best.