3 - 5 month olds, a few questions

kiwi443

How often do your babies eat? If ff, how much?

How many naps (if on a consistent schedule)?

How long are the naps? 

 

 

kiwi443

My girls eat 5-6 oz. every 3 1/2 hours during the day.

The nap question is kind of tricky for me. I'm wondering if anyone is in the same boat? I guess they take 4 naps, but they wake often while napping. They often fall asleep and then wake 30-45 min. later, after a bit they fall asleep again.

 

emma12210

Aahh I need to get off the bump, but here I go... haha

I ff every 3 hours... DS takes 2 oz for 1st feeding, then usually 3-4 oz the rest of the day, 6 oz at bedtime and middle of the night. Random, I know, but pedi says it's ok and not unusual for babies to only take 3-4 oz at a time til they're 8-9 months old. And his weight is 56 percentile, so...

DD takes 4-7 oz per feeding (and her weight is 21 percentile, go figure)

My schedule is basically eat, awake, sleep with feedings every 3 hours. I only let them stay awake 1-1.5 hours at a time, including feedings. They sleep anywhere from 45 min to 2 hours (2 hours is a GOOD day), and have been known to take only 30 min naps

Ideally it goes like this:

8am - awake, bottle (I feed 1 after the other)

9:30 - nap

11 - bottle

12:30 - nap

2 - bottle

3:30 - nap

5 - bottle

try to keep them awake, but usually go down at 6pm for about 30 min while we eat dinner - we wake them up after 30 min

7 - bottle and bed

atc282

DS is a big baby so if he was eating BM (5 oz.), he ate every 2 hrs. If it was formula (6 oz.), it was typically every 3 hours.

He took 3 naps up until about 6 mo. old. An hour or so around 9 am, a longer 2 hour nap from about 12:30-2:30, and a cat nap (about 30-40 min.) around 5:30 pm. Bed time is 7:30 pm.

 

 

emma12210

kiwi443:

My girls eat 5-6 oz. every 3 1/2 hours during the day.

The nap question is kind of tricky for me. I'm wondering if anyone is in the same boat? I guess they take 4 naps, but they wake often while napping. They often fall asleep and then wake 30-45 min. later, after a bit they fall asleep again.

 

 

DS does this, I let him cry for 5-10 min and he'll usually go back to sleep... sometimes they cry when settling into a deeper sleep.

macchiatto

I think I actually still remember ...

How often do your babies eat? If ff, how much?

At 4.5m when they started STTN, they dropped to 4 bottles a day (about every 4 hrs) and were drinking 7-8 oz bottles, occasionally 9. So around 32 oz/day at that age, closer to 6m it was 32-36. (They were on formula exclusively from 1m on.)

How many naps (if on a consistent schedule)? How long are the naps? 

They were on a pretty consistent nap schedule from 2m on thanks to HSHHC. They had two longer naps in the morning and afternoon, both around 2 hrs (give or take 1/2 hr) and then a cat nap around dinner time that was about 45 mins.

 

Kristi1971

My girls are now 3 months and days.  They eat about 4.5-5 oz. per meal, 5 meals per day.  I set no schedule for their naps and feeds, but I have tracked them to know.  My girls will do a 12 hour stretch at night with feeds before and after (like bookends) and one in the middle.  Then they will have 2 other feeds during the afternoon.   For example, they may do this -

6pm feed, be up for a little while (half hour maybe), fall asleep until 3am or so, feed and immediately fall back asleep until around 6:30am, feed, fall asleep immediately until around 10am, eat again around 2pm and start all over again.  The times vary, but you get the idea. 

Sometimes, they will go way later and skip the 10am feed, but they will make up for it later with 2 feeds within 2 hours of each other in the evening before bed.

They still sleep a LOT, so I more look for their awake times than nap times.  They will have a couple of longer awake times in the late afternoon/evening, but sleep a lot otherwise.  They were 8 weeks early, so that may be the difference.  Once they are awake more, I expect to start tracking naps vs. awake times.

What about you?

mirnb

Boys are 5 months (close to 6) but have been on this schedule since about 4.5 months.

Wake-up eat b/w 7-8am (8oz with cereal)

Nap time 10-12

Eat 8oz around 12 just started trying a few tbsp of baby food with this

Nap time 2-5 (may wake up a few times but still cranky/crying so I know they are still tired, done nap when they wake-up happy and talking)

 Dinner around 5 eat 8oz

Bed time 7:30

dream feed 8oz at 10pm then sleep till morning

hope this helps!

besu-chan

you can see a detailed schedule in my post on 4-month sleep a few posts down, but to answer your questions...

they eat 5 times a day. DD1 takes 6oz and DD2 takes 5oz for most feedings.

they go right back down after the first feeding at 5am so I'm not sure if that counts as a nap or just more "nighttime sleep". other than that one there are 3 naps- the first two (morning and around noon) are close to 2 hrs, the third (late afternoon) is shorter- usually an hour or less.

afwifestrecker7706

Mine eat every 3 hours during the day. They eat 3-5oz depending on baby and how they feel. 

They take 2 naps one about an hour and half after get up for 1-1 1/2 hour.. Then a 3 hour nap from 2-5 well normally 2-2 1/2 hour. They STTN 8:30pm-7:30am.  

kiwi443

Thanks! It's interesting to hear what others are doing.

 Macchiatto - You have an awesome memory!

Emma - I'm not opposed to letting them fuss a bit to settle down, but it doesn't take long for either of them to escalate to full-blown screaming and then it takes a long time for them to calm back down. I never had sleep issues with my son, so this is a learning curve! Thankfully, they do sleep very well at night.

sarahvarno

My boys eat 4-5oz every 3 hours. Right before bed they do about 6-7oz. My boys nap for about 30-45 minutes in the morning. They wake up at 8am and take a nap at 10am then take a 1 to 2 hour nap in the afternoon, usually 2-4pm. They have one more nap from 6-7pm and then they go to bed at 9pm.