Why the all-night buffet at 7 months?
Two weeks to a month ago, baby Bix was sleeping minimum 4.5 - 5 hours at a time. For one entire blissful week he even woke only once a night in a 12 hour sleep! Now we have had the all-night boob buffet going and I can't figure out why? For the past two - three nights, he has been up and wanting to eat every 2.5 - 3 hours. (I'm exhausted and cannot keep up with pumping, feeding him and getting enough quality calories into me!)
Background to help the great sleep detectives solve the case: He puts himself to sleep in his crib from drowsy - but awake - at night and at naps. He has a lovey and a paci and can find both in the crib. We have a solid routine. According to the great internet, the room temp is fine. He sleeps in a BG 4.0 ultra stuffed with a sleep n play with feet over it. He has his two bottom teeth and the pedi suspects his tops are coming in because he is suddenly snotty mcsnotterson with no cold symptoms.
When he wakes, nothing will soothe him but nursing or a bottle of expressed breast milk. We are BLW and he is eating at breakfast and dinner...if you can call it eating...it's more playing with fruit & veggies.;)
Could it be teething? Could it be a growth spurt at 7 months? Could he be this hungry?
TIA!
Re: Why the all-night buffet at 7 months?
My guess would be teething. Can you try a teething necklace or borion camilia (chamomile) to see if it would help him sleep in longer stretches again? I doubt he's actually hungry that frequently at this age, especially since you've started solids.
Big E (6) & Little E (2.5)
Max stopped STTN right when we started solids (also BLW, though we do jar foods frequently with him grabbing the loaded spoon). Granted he's been teething A LOT since 3 months (4 months the first 2 popped, now he has 8). Regardless of how much he eats during the day, or WHAT he eats during the day, he has barely slept longer than a 4 hour stretch at night in months, often waking every 2 hours, and only 2-3 times have I been able to soothe him back to sleep without nursing.
The night sessions do seem to be shorter, but then they perpetuate a nasty cycle of him waking up even more because he has to pee more frequently (when for a while, he was STTN and waking up dry and even using our EC potty first thing).
Oh, and he has never (well, we'll call it 2-3 times) put himself to sleep. He *must* nurse to sleep. His bedtime has been pushed later, too, though that may be more due to the return of the elusive daytime naps.
I know this doesn't really help with a solution, but I did just want to express that you are not alone.
My guess would also be teething.
We went through a similar phase at that age where nursing was increased and sleep decreased. We also did BLW and in the beginning DD hardly ate anything. At night she would wake very frequently, nurse for 5 minutes and then fall asleep. An hour later she would be up again...same thing. I think part of it was comfort nursing from teething pain and part of it was from not eating enough solids - but eating solids like harder fruit and veggies seemed to increase teething discomfort.
I ended up offering mostly very soft foods such as cooked egg yolk, mashed avocado, banana, steamed sweet potato sticks and frozen, peeled grapes (cut into tiny cubes).
DD did the same thing around 8 months and it was a huge growth spurt and milestones. i'd jump on the "teething" bandwagon but DD didn't get teeth till 13 months so for us sleep interruption wasn't caused by teething (for us anyway).
milestones always caused us to loose sleep, even now we are fighting the night time wakefulness due to potty training milestones.
We're going through this right now, too. I'm almost positive it's because of teething.
It first happened 6 weeks ago, right before her first teeth came in. I'm betting that her top two will be poking through soon.
Thanks for the input ladies. I think it may be a combination of all of it, teething, milestones, etc. He is **this** close to full on crawling.
We've tried amber but the stones started breaking after a couple of wears. (Inspired by Finn has great customer service and refunded us the money!) Plus I'm not comfortable with him wearing them at night.
Poppet - Misery loves company. I hope it gets better for you!
Here's hoping tonight is better and that the teeth break through soon!