Babies: 6 - 9 Months

4 am feeding necessary?

Hi there,

This is a similar sleep question to the one posted below.  My little guy still wakes for a bottle between 3:45 and 4:45 am.  He gets 5 oz and sucks it down.  He will be 7 months tomorrow.  Has anyone done cry it out for a morning time like this?  I know the person below asked a similar question but this is still middle of the night, as in he isn't ready or even close to being ready to be up for the day.

Has anyone been in a similar situation?  I don't mind giving him this bottle, I just don't know that at 7 months he still NEEDS it.  He is a big boy, 21 pounds at 6 months. 

Thoughts? 

Re: 4 am feeding necessary?

  • We dropped the 4am feeding by accident. He too was taking a full 5oz or so so I didn't want to drop the feeding at all. I figured if he was taking a bottle he was hungry. We would just get up and feed him at the first sign of waking.

    One night we forgot to turn on the baby monitor and he didn't wake us up. He is in the room next to us so I know if he really got going he would wake us up for sure. So the next night instead of getting him we let him fuss to see what happened. He didn't even cry really. He whined for about ten minutes and then fell back asleep until morning. One more night of that and then he didn't wake up anymore. Every now then he will wake up and if he starts to really cry we do go in and cuddle or feed him but most of the time he just fusses for a few and drifts right back off.

    ETA that was between 6 and 7 months.
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  • You could try weaning him by reducing the amount you offer him by half an ounce each night until it's only an ounce, then drop it.  Make sure you add a little extra to his other bottles to make up the difference during the day.


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  • My DS was also doing this. I wasn't sure if he really needed it b/c sometimes he would STTN and other times he wouldn't. I started giving him a dream feed around 10:00 and stopped going right in when he would wake up in the early morning. Now he still usually wakes around 5:30 or 6:30 and fusses a little bit, but he goes back to sleep until 8:00 or 8:30. When he gets up, he is then usually very happy and actually isn't acting like he's starving which still amazes me. I dropped the dream feed within about a week b/c we were able to increase his daytime ounces to off-set losing the extra bottle.
                 

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  • My ped said 1-2 times a night is "okay" until they are 9 months.  Then, they encourage dropping night feedings.

    IDK, I still do the 2AM feeding for DD. 

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  • We had a similar experience as the first reply on this thread. At about 4-5 months we half accidentally / half slept through the early morning fussing and she would fall back asleep until 6-7 which is when I get up anyway. Eventually she stopped even waking in the middle of the night and it did not take that long. Now she goes down at 8 and we get her up at 7 to go to daycare. If she wakes before that she seems happy to lay and talk to herself and play with her giraffe.

     

  • I would say the first thing you could try, if you are not already doing it, is a "dreamfeed".  Definitions vary by whom you talk to, but for us, I fed DS at 10pm, just another 4 ozs to "top off his tank".  He never woke up for the feeding at all.  I just picked him up, fed him and back down.  That was the 1st step we took to drop the night feeding.

    Once that was done and he was STTN for 2 weeks consistently, we started dropping the dream feed, dropping it down by ozs, as a PP mentioned.  Then eventually, no dream feed.

    We also use a very consistent wake time, since DS is in daycare.  So I think the combo of the dream feed, plus the consistent I know I will get food at this time, made the difference for us.

    We did this at a very early age, so I couldn't tell you how baby might react being a little older, since I don't have experience there.  But might be worth a shot.  GL! 

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