Baby wakes up - shud I feed her??

fennho

fennho

Registered User
hi there mommies.. Me again

My gal is now 3mths 2 weeks, weighing at 7.2kg at her last chkup. I put her to bed at around 7-8pm, usually I nurse her to La-La Land. She usually will sleep thru to about 4-5am and will wakeup. If she wakes up and does not cry for food BUT she makes this really LOUD sucking sounds on her hands, shud I pick her up & feed her or shud I jus let her be ie sucks her hand back to sleep if she doesn't cry? I read tat babies at her weight shud be able to sustain 7pm to 7am (she already had abt 5-6feeds in the day) so I'm not sure if I shud still pick her up to feed if she's really hungry or just relying on my breast to fall asleep again. Sometimes its even earlier around 3am. If she whimpers I'd pick her up and feed (on demand) but I'm unsure if she really needs it. Shud I jus pat her back to sleep? She usually will cry despite patting and me mindful of disturbing my mom and my neighbour (HK have really thin walls!) I would pick her and feed her back to sleep cos I can't bear to see her cry. I'm worried of cultivatng a bad habit cos I heard a fren's son STILL waking up for feeds even at 13mth old for no apparent reason, simply out of habit. Comments & advices pls? Thanks:thanks
 
Hi
I was going through a similar thing when my little one was around 4 months old. The midwife said it could be a growth spurt or she could just be doing it from habit.
At first I would get up and feed her until she went back to sleep, then I noticed that she wasn't taking that much milk and was doing it for comfort.
I made my husband wake up and go into her room to settle her back down, he did, she cried and a few minutes later he went in again. After the second time she fell back to sleep and didn't wake up until around 6:30am. The next night was similar and then after that she didn't wake up anymore until the teething started.
She is now almost 11 months old and sleeps from 7pm until 6 - 6:30. I am still breastfeeding although she is going off it and only takes morning and evening feeds with very little in the day time now.
If you have someone else who could help you instead of you getting up it may help. If she is hungry for milk then you will be able to tell as she won't stop crying until she gets it. Babies can smell their mothers millk and if someone else is there your daughter will know that she isn't going to get any milk.
Hope this makes sense.
Good luck
 
same situation.

My baby is 4 months old this week and he used to sleep from 7pm to 4am then I fed her back to bed until 7am.
But suddenly this week he woke up at 10pm, then 1am then 4am and woke up at 5-6.30am.
Las night I asked my hubby to carry her or pat her to bed which was sucessful, apart from when he was up at 1am.
We will carry on tonight and see what happen.

Fenho, love you posts by the way. Seems like we share the same wories and our babies somehow share similar problem at similar time. Quite reassuring..
 
me too. My baby is a bit older, and his sleeping pattern has always been erratic. Recently he has been sleeping quite well from 8ish till 12 for a feed and then till next morning 6:45 for his feed. We are trying to break his midnight feed but he wakes up just the same - dunno wat to do. sometimes he wakes up and starts playing and babbling to himself - in the middle of the night ! We end up having to pick him up and pat him back to sleep.

I was at my wits end trying to figure out whyhe does not settle into a regular pattern....

same as adahc, I find it reassuring that I'm not the only one out there with these (similar) problems !!
 
my baby is 9 months old and she wakes up around twice per night. she doesn't always need feeding, but i offer her my milk anyway, just in case. in our experience, holding back with my breast always made her unsettled and made it harder for her to get back to sleep. now i feed her every time and she'll be back in dreamland immediately! my friend's bub needed a bottle of milk till he was 2 years old. i always remind myself that they're soo little and that i should give her time for adjustment.
 
if he's happily babbling away, why are you going to pat him to sleep? leave him alone, he may go back to sleep himself.

personally, i have always fed my child if they wake up in the middle of the night. it's a pain in the neck and it lasted until my son was 2 (and now happening with my daughter) but really it isn't that much of a problem (except i get tired, but i have an awesome husband who helps A LOT!). I expect that my daughter will be the same, but i'm not stressed about it. my son has slept through almost every single night since he was 2 (now 3yr3m). well, that's not technically right, he wakes up has a sip of juice and goes back to sleep on his own.

my figuring is... i sleep with a bottle of water by my bed and i get thirsty and drink from it throughout the night. my husband has the same thing and now my son wakes up to drink some juice, so isn't it possible that baby wakes for a feed, not because she is hungry, but because she is thirsty?

if this is the case, then she doesn't need the same full on feed as when she was smaller and it was out of hunger. when my girl is a little older, i will try giving her a no spill cup to see if she'll drink from that instead of a bottle.
 
Wow. You have a big and chubby baby, fennho. Well done.
Like the rest of the mommies here, I think it's good to give the lil' one some 'alone' time to herself. I only go to my bub when she's crying out. If she's talking to herself, playing by herself in her cot, I let her be. She'll cry if she's hungry!
 
Carang,

he is usually good with babling and playing alone, but he starts crying when he is sleepy - that is when he needs some help to sleep. On good nights, he can settle with a pacifier and some patting. But that good habit (sleeping by himself with shush-patting) is gone since he became quite sick twice in a row 2 months ago. There was a period when he would not last half an hour in bed without waking up continuously. So we had to hold him so that he feels more secure , and he has been more regular with his sleep for the past few weeks.

We are trying to break the holding to sleep habit (itself another long story), but I jsut can't figure out why he doesn't seem to settle into a pattern although we now have a good schedule going. Some babies are like clockwork, I guess mine just isn't made that way.
 
I posted this at 5-ish this morning...i was wondering becos she was making this REALLY LOUD sucking sounds by sucking on her hands! Someone from this site told me if they're sucking their hands = hungry. Soon after aft i posted, she started crying liao. Haha. In the end, i picked her up and fed her, 10-15mins, she knocked out.

Sage
Thanks for the compliment...i am wondering how i am going to continue nursing her to sleep as she gets older AND heavier!

Any experience mommies around who used to nurse their babies to sleep...when and how r they gonna learn sleeping on their own? Is it gradual?

Adahc
I think your bb is going thru a growth spurt..sounds like it. I am wondering how i am gonna cope when mine does. I am just going thru this taking one day at a time. Yes, it's comforting to know we're not alone in this, particularly when you felt lost and baby is crying, or u are wondering if it's normal, yes? PM me, maybe we can meet up to compare notes :) Where ru from originally? I'm from Singapore.

Konradsmom
At least your boy STILL takes the pacifier...my gal rejects everything plastic. It's heartwarming to know i'm "not replaceable" yet, at 3-4am, it's tiring!
 
I think so although he seems to settle back to hisnormal self (I might said it too soon). I set the time for him to sleep during the day as it is important to have a goodnap during the day to get a good night sleep. If he is overtiring, he tends to be jumpy and wakes up a lot during the night. At your baby's age mine too) they should sleep 14 hours a day.
I used to feed her to bed , now I'm rocking (equally bad). I use a lot of white noise from air con noise, pumping machine (just switch it on) while rocking him (if I'm lucky I can even put him down and pat him while the pumping machine is pumping). It's a gradual thing but requires work from your part to make it happen though. They won't just do it themselves.
My baby hates pacifier too. Oh by the way for the last feed I use 'MAM' bottle of 5oz milk, that send him to sleep pretty quite.
The word on the street is if the baby is full they tend to go to sleep easier and he sleeps longer since I did that. I use my breast milk though, never use formula. The reason I use MAM is because it is the closest to human's nipples. Give it a go. My son hates pacifiers too by the way, still does.
Yes we should all meet up actually.

I live in Discovery Bay.Have you been to any group at all? I find that it gives me confident and time pass quickly too. Somehow my son seems more relax after going to the class and see other babies.
 
adahc
i bought the Adiri bottle and MAM bottle (both claims to be very breast-like feeding). I tried the Adiri, she rejected it as well. But i havent try the MAM yet though. My baby has got reflux so any amount of crying makes it worse...so i'm very mindful of minimising her cries...maybe some people will say i'm spoiling her, but oh well, it pains me to see her cry...and i'm so tired of trying. I do think of how i'm going to wean her in the future to bottles...is it gonna be more difficult? :(

Talking about sleep...i know babies of their age needs apprx 14-15hours a day....any idea, when is it going to change (as in lesser)?? Is there a guide somewhere i can refer to?
 
Oh btw, i havent got the chance to meet up with new mommies yet. But Discovery bay is far! I live in Kowloon West, jus right above Elements.
 
Fennho,
My baby also got reflux. Jesus they are similar arn't they?
Try MAM bottle. I find that we have to be strong sometime which does help. They have strong will,,,babies this age.
I think they sleep 14-15 hours now and then gradually gone down from 6 months or so. All I know from reading somewhere (not sure it is the best source) on the net is that at 9 months they will have an ability to force themselves to stay awak if they want to.which I dread.
So I think you might want to start some gentle routine now.
I'm not really for the control crying and all though. But a gentle routine of putting him to bed when he is 'almost' gone to sleep is an art in itself and it helps. Must try.
I also put him in the cot and let him play with his toys (or me) just an hour before bed time, dim all the light and speak in acalm voice help a bit too. Might not help on the first day or two but it helps him gettting used to the idea of bedtime and feel safe in his cot.
That's what I am doing right now.
 
If when you baby wakes up she will go back to sleep by herself then I?d let her to that.

If, however, by leaving her she will wake herself up completely then I?d quickly feed her back to sleep. Generally if a baby wakes up but is still very sleep they only need a few minutes of feeding to get them to sleep again. This means that everyone?s sleep is disturbed only slightly. If the baby gets to the crying stage it tends to mean a much long feed to settle the baby down again.

This is one of the beauties of breastfeeding ? that it gets the baby to sleep ? use it to your advantage.

Best wishes,
SARAH
 
My son was fed to sleep (breastfeeding) until he was 10 months old. It basically meant he didn't go to sleep by himself, or sleep through the night until he was ten months old.
Was pretty tough at times but what he needed, which is why we did it.
I tried everything to get him to sleep by himself before then but nothing worked....and then he did it by himself when he weaned himself!!
 
My little girl also needs to be nursed to sleep and she's now 11 months old. However for the past 3 weeks or so she's been sleeping thru the night (with the exception of a couple of nights). Also I noticed recently when I put her down at night after nursing her she doesn't fall asleep immediately and I can hear her make some noise thru the baby monitor. She eventually falls asleep in 10-15 mins.
 
bekyboo44
thnks for sharing...it's comforting to know they will eventually learn to fall asleep by themselves without me forcing them to any "sleep solutions" marketed out there...i just cant or rather dont have the heart to.

AG2007
when u say your gal "make some noise" was it crying? Or just babbling? tks for sharing too.
 
She's mainly babbling. Sometimes she does cry softly and I leave her for a couple of minutes. But if the cry becomes stronger I go back in to comfort her. I can't stand hearing her cry!!!!
 
bekyboo44 said:
My son was fed to sleep (breastfeeding) until he was 10 months old. It basically meant he didn't go to sleep by himself, or sleep through the night until he was ten months old.
Was pretty tough at times but what he needed, which is why we did it.
I tried everything to get him to sleep by himself befe then but nothing worked....and then he did it by himself when he weaned himself!!
Click to expand...

Bekyboo
when u said he suddenly did it by himself, do u mean one fine day he suddenly just go to sleep by himself without u nursing him? Can u explain how it happened? Thks!
 
Dear Fennho,

I recommend that you join some of the la Leche League meetings in Hong Kong. At the meetings you will be able to find lots of mothers who don?t like the idea of letting their babies cry and how they cope with life.

You?ll also find mothers there with babies of many different ages. I liked going because there were a couple of mothers with babies a bit older than mine and so I always knew what to expect next.

Children do learn to sleep longer as they grow older ? with or without your help. I fed all mine to sleep and they all sleep through the night now. For mime it didn?t happen all at once. First they would sleep all night occasionally and then after a month or two they?d mange to sleep two or three nights a week without waking up and finally they?d only wake up if something had upset them in the daytime and now they sleep through no matter what.

Barb
 
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