8.5 mos & nursing 2-3x/night

[deebouchie]

Okay, folks. Here’s the deal. My son (Baby J) had 3 nights of sleep regression at 4 months & then slept through the night for 2 months straight. At 6 months, it just stopped all of a sudden. No noticeable changes in development, he had been in his own room for 3 weeks already, has never struggled with being underweight, & is EBF. I’m really puzzled as to what threw him off.
Since then, we’ve been waking 2-3x a night (every 3-4 hours). He’ll babble for a few minutes & if left alone, he’ll start to lose control & cry around minute 15. I’m a SAHM, baby is EBF, & my husband is a light sleeper, so to help my husband out, I just go upstairs & nurse baby back to sleep because it’s the quickest & quietest way to get him back down.

Baby J puts himself down great. We do bath, PJ’s, books, nurse for 30 mins, and then I lay him in the crib. Nursery is super dark, cool, & we use white noise. He takes 5-10 minutes max to conk out. We have no issue with actually going to sleep, it’s the middle of the night wake-ups & cutting the feeds back that I’m struggling with.

Last week was really rough with sleep. We were up more than normal & I just couldn’t take it anymore. We attempted to start sleep training Friday night using Taking Cara Babies ABC’s of sleep.
We did our routine, he was down by 7:30. Woke up at 10:30 and we did pop-ins as scheduled. Husband did the first & third, I did the second. It went on til 11:50 with him trying to self soothe (he’s a thumb sucker) before I waved the white flag & went to nurse him. After 15 mins of nursing, he was calm & went right to sleep. There were several times where we were watching the monitor thinking “oh! He’s got it- he’s asleep” and then he’d be right at the top of the roller coaster again.

Last night, we didn’t try again. I decided I should cut back on the amount of time that we nurse at night as it felt like quitting cold turkey just wasn’t gonna work. Well, I cut him back to 4 minutes in each boob last night & he was down for 10 minutes before he woke up again. After 5 more minutes of boob, he slept for 5 hours.

What gives!?!?

 

[iamsuperb]

@deebouchie Whatever you decide to try - have a game plan, make a super specific plan, try to envision all the scenarios and make it super cut and dry so it’s easiest for baby to figure out what you want. Then be completely consistent and give it a week before you throw in the towel.

 

[irishamerican4christ]

@deebouchie Is he reverse cycling? My baby picked up an extra night feed after his 6m growth spurt and then I started noticing he wasn't really interested in nursing upon waking up in the morning. He was nursing twice a night too. I ended up night weaning at 7.5m over 1.5-2 weeks to give him time to shift all his caloric intake to daytime only.

 

[deebouchie]

@irishamerican4christ I read your comments when I posted this the other day & am so thankful for your input. I think you’re absolutely correct. I’ve been upping his daily calories & have also started nursing more (per taking Cara babies) & I’m seeing great results.
Overnight, if he wakes, I’m giving him time to work through his wake up & try to put himself back to sleep. However, he’s still legitimately hungry, so I go nurse & have been capping his feeds to a certain amount of time.
2 nights ago we had an unusually very busy day. Still managed to feed him a ton, but both naps were on the go & in his car seat. He slept through the night!
Last night, he woke once at 12:35. After some attempts at self soothing, I nursed for 4 mins per side & laid him back down. He self soothed with his thumb & has been asleep since (it’s 7:10a est here).

I can’t thank you enough for pointing this out to me & giving me some ideas to correct the issues. I hope it sticks!!

 

[irishamerican4christ]

@deebouchie You're welcome! Glad you were able to get to the bottom of it and it's getting better

 

[17icarter]

@irishamerican4christ Not OP but following this thread because my almost 8 month old wakes up to eat every 3 hours now - would you mind sharing how you night weaned? Thanks!

 

[irishamerican4christ]

@17icarter I increased his solids intake (3 meals per day, 3-4 oz per meal, protein heavy for dinner - beans, avocado, meat, etc) and encouraged nursing every 2.5-3 hours during the day. My son was waking up to nurse at 12-2am and 4-5:30am. I weaned off the earlier feed first over a few days by only giving him 1 boob (instead of offering both), then reduced the time he could nurse to 2 min (he's a very efficient eater so a full feed for him only takes 4-5 min). Then I dropped it completely and let him CIO if he woke up at that time. He cried for 2 nights and then stopped waking up at that time. I kept the 2nd feed until I adjusted his schedule to allow for an earlier wake up time (previously desired wake time was 7:30, now it is 6:30), since he couldn't go much more than 11-12 hours without eating initially.

For the OP, there may be some crying if you choose to night wean so I'd prep your husband to sleep with earplugs/sound machine etc. For us the crying wasn't any worse than when we sleep trained..he kinda cried on and off (eg 10 min crying, then would fall asleep for 10 min) for an hour or so when I got to the point where I dropped the feed. But it wasn't a full on distress cry, more of a moaning/fussing.

 

[jparadise]

@irishamerican4christ What would you recommend if lo is full on crying after dropping the first feed?

 

[irishamerican4christ]

@jparadise Depends on if baby is already sleep trained or not. Mine did cry when I took him off the boob before he was finished but I just put him down and within a few minutes he was sucking on his hand and settling down - the sleep pressure is high enough still at 12-2am that if baby knows how to put themselves to sleep, they should be able to do so. If not sleep trained, then you might have to try to settle them in other ways (rocking, patting etc) but then you might be stuck with a new sleep association or reinforcing a current one.

The early morning feed was harder to drop because my baby would just be up for the day when he woke up at that time. I actually didn't mind that feed and would've kept it except he stopped going back to sleep after. I had to hold him back to sleep for a week or so instead.

 

[jparadise]

@irishamerican4christ Yes, she is sleep trained and can put herself to sleep. She was on a 2 feed schedule but lately since she is 5 n half months she has been waking up every 2 hours or so. Her full feed is like 5 mins, so I have been cutting off 30 sec every night. Last night we did 4 mins and she went back to sleep but woke up 15-20 mins later again crying bloody Mary. Nothing convinced her but nursing. The nights are getting bad and her WW which used to be around 2 hours is now around 3 hours! I don't know if this is a regression or I should be moving to a 3 nap schedule.

 

[17icarter]

@irishamerican4christ Thanks for your detailed reply!!