Baby wakes to feed 4+ times a night

[omaheart]

How do I sleep train a baby who wakes up screaming for a bottle? Even a nappy change sets her off and she screams the place down. I don’t know how to just let her cry if she is seemingly starving. Please help an exhausted parent, I’m at my wits end

EDIT: She is 5.5 months old, takes 4oz of expressed breast milk every 2-3 hours during the day. I have tried increasing the amount of milk and feeding more frequently but she just refuses to drink more. She’ll go to bed at around 6-7pm, sometimes fuss for a long time before she sleeps. Then proceed to wake every 3 hours, almost on the dot. Screams the place down until she is fed. Naps are all contact naps, wake windows of 1.5-2 hours, naps last 1-1.5 hours. Thanks for all your help!

 

[blogs]

@omaheart Hey! I literally just finished sleep training my son. He would wake up 3 times a night to feed.

My sister in law bought some sleep training package for 200$ and it worked with her kid. She sent it to me and it worked for us! I was dreading it... But it only took 7 days for us.

I know you're exhausted, if you'd like to send me a msg and I can share the document with you!

 

[psychmajormom]

@blogs Hello! Would you be willing to share? Curious how old your son is

 

[blogs]

@psychmajormom Hey! He just turned 8 months old when I decided to do it. My sister did this when her child was 4 months

 

[tedbaker88]

@blogs Hi!! Wonder if you could share with me also. 5 month old has been going through it and looking for something to help get her sleep pattern better

 

[lorenacoto]

@omaheart In order for a baby to sleep throughout the night without needing a feeding they must be eating a minimum of 24oz in a day (and a max of 32oz). That means at minimum 6oz, 4 times a day. The goal is to get her to stop eating at night by increasing her calories during the day. That means that you wean her night feedings by 1 oz every 2 days (as someone mentioned above I believe).

The book “12 hours by 12 weeks” is a phenomenal resource for this.

 

[championflyer]

@lorenacoto Adding to this, if she’s having a hard time eating more during the day, maybe change the bottle nipple flow, or change the bottle.

It definitely sounds like she’s almost reverse cycling. More day Time milk to cut the nighttime feeds.

 

[outofplace_christian]

@omaheart I set a limit of only feeding if it has been 4 or more hours since the last feeding. At 5.5 months, baby doesn’t need to eat more frequently than that.

I saw in some of your other responses that you’re still room sharing + feeding 4oz of expressed breast milk. I think night weaning will be easier once you’re no longer room sharing. Baby can smell you and associates you with food. This happened to me even though I was EFF by then!

My baby is big, but by 5.5 months she could eat up to 8oz of formula in a sitting. Usually about 6 oz at a time. Your baby ready for larger feedings. If you feed your baby more milk fewer times per day, she will be less hungry at night. You’ll also be starting solids really soon if you haven’t already, so she’ll be getting more calories that way too.

 

[milu47]

@outofplace_christian This is really good advice! My breastfed baby would always wake soon after I went to bed. Now she is doing the long 5 hour stretch since we moved her to her own room! They definitely can smell you haha

 

[seekinganswersinlife]

@omaheart I think a lot of the links here will help you:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sleeptrain/comments/1agqlkv/wtf_are_my_wws_do_i_cio_with_emws_my_st_baby_not

Schedule- at 5.5 months, I’d expect wake windows of 2.5 hours. No more than 3 hours naps total. 11 hour expected night.

Is baby going down awake at bedtime, last feed ending 20 min prior, in their own crib and room?

See links for nightweaning and nap training in the link above.

 

[heartaflame4yahshua]

@seekinganswersinlife Was going to suggest modifying wake windows as well. Baby should be awake 2-2.5 hours in between naps and total 3 naps a day.

FWIW, this is what life looked like with my son at 7 months. Until a coworker (older woman with 5 kids) straight up told me “he’s just playing you” and told me to sleep train. She was right, I was enabling his bad sleep habits.

 

[byzantine]

@omaheart Hey I was in a very similar situation. Are you still room sharing?

LO did not reduce his night feeds until he was in his own room. Otherwise he very much thought it was a 24/7 buffet.

Once separate he dropped from 3-4 feeds to 2, which I’m fine with at his age (he’s 5 months).

For training we basically did 5-3-3, but we did fuss it out, not full CIO. It takes longer but I felt more comfortable starting with it earlier. Basically we let him cry for 10-15 minutes if it wasn’t on the 5-3-3 schedule and if still crying at the end, I fed him.

Sometimes we would try and use a paci to soothe instead and that worked sometimes. Soon I learned that if he WAS going to soothe himself, it would be around 8 minute mark - so I made the max cry session 10 min. I feel more intune to his cries now - I feel like I know a cry that will last vs one he will be able to overcome within a minute. But it’s a lot of trial and error and it took weeks, not days.

 

[omaheart]

@byzantine We are still room sharing, but we don’t have a room for her to sleep in (waiting to move house, so it’s chaos). I did think moving her into her own room would make things much easier, but unfortunately not an option for us at the moment.

 

[byzantine]

@omaheart that’s tough - I found it really hard to sleep train in the same room. Even “just” 15 min of crying at 3am right near your bed is a LOT. Of course you’re going to go and feed!

 

[job28]

@omaheart You could try the 5-3-3 plan where you don't feed unless it's been 5hrs since the last feed, then every 3hrs after. This worked for us. Early on in sleep training, we had him wake a couple times 2-3hrs into the night and we just followed our sleep training plan. He caught on and stopped waking wanting that feed. Almost 2 months after initiating sleep training, he's been sleeping through without feeds until the last couple nights because he caught a cold and needs the extra fluids.

My MIL said she let my husband cry one night instead of feeding and it took one night and he was weaned for good. So that's another option to just go cold turkey. It's whatever your comfort level is and what you feel will work best for your baby. We preferred to generally let our LO lead while putting parameters in so we weren't responding to every wake with food; knowing that nights may vary for a while until he's consistently eating solids and can drink a good amount of water when he has a cough/sore throat.

 

[omaheart]

@job28 Thanks for your reply. Did you comfort your little one the first time they woke up for food? Or did you just let him self soothe?

 

[job28]

@omaheart We used our check and console method so we went in every 10 min to console him. However, he honestly just continued to cry for about 30 min (heartbreaking), but then slept for another 4hrs after that so we knew he couldn't actually be hungry. He just needed to get out of the habit of waking.

 

[inneedofadvice12]

@omaheart Depending on age (please give some more details on age/day schedule!) she may not be hungry but looking for comfort when she wakes. Sleep training will solve any wakes that aren't for hunger/pain/discomfort. However, the first step is to make sure the daytime is optimised to set yourself up for bedtime success, so appropriate time awake, feeding and napping during the day. Also, don't change nappies overnight unless she poos.

 

[omaheart]

@inneedofadvice12 Apologies! I was really tired when I wrote this, but I have edited the post to include more details. Thank you!

 

[gentleminh]

@inneedofadvice12 What does an optimized daytime look like? I have a 6mo that a month ago used to sleep through the night most nights and if not got up 1-2 times. She exploded one week and started waking multiple times a night, eating the majority of her food at night. After a week it improved slightly but I fear we’re back at it again. We’re trying to get daycare to feed her more but it’s difficult when she can be putsy during the day. We’re worried she’ll wake up more if we feed her less at night, stuck in this viscous cycle.

When she wakes up we feed her and rock her until she’s out enough we can set her down. We have a 3yo downstairs who has also been going through a bad sleep pattern that we don’t want to wake up. That’s a whole other problem though.

She was eating like 40oz of breast milk a day during that bad week. It’s a bit more normal now in the 30’s. Daycare (6:30 - 4:00) is feeding her 18 oz on a good day. We’re introducing oatmeal cereal in the evenings. At night she can have anywhere between 4-6 oz bottles 2-4 times a night including bedtime.

I think in our case she’s legitimately hungry, how do we switch this to the daytime, I’m barely functioning at work most days.