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Babies: 0 - 3 Months
noahchristopher
member
At 8 weeks, how does your baby sleep at night?
noahchristopher
member
Our baby is 8 weeks old. For the last three weeks this is his night time sleep schedule....
Bath- Between 7-8
Bottle (formula) 8ish
Bed by 8:30ish
Sleeps for 4 1/2 hours until 12:30 or 1:00 am (sometimes 1:30)
We have to use a pacifier one time at 12:30am to get him to sleep for another hour til 1am or so.
Then, at 1:30 am or so we give him his bottle, rock him
Back to sleep by 2am
Up again around 5:45am
Bottle
Back to sleep from 6:30am til 7:30am or 8am
Sound normal?
Naps are getting a little better too, but I really have to get him down before he gets overtired.
Just wondering if this is a normal pattern for an 8 week old, and when they stop dropping the middle of the night feeding? Also, we have never done the "dream Feed." Should we start, in order to get him through the night without waking for the 2am bottle?
Thanks for any input.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: At 8 weeks, how does your baby sleep at night?
That sounds about the same as my LO at 7-8 weeks. Between 8-9 weeks she started doing 5-5 1/2 hours and then she did 8 hours the night before she turned 2 months. Since then she mostly sleeps through the night but since we moved her bedtime up to 8pm so sleeping 8 hrs still has her up around 4pm for a bottle, but it doesn't bother me because she goes right back down. She has done 10 hrs twice
You are doing well, but in my opinion at this age you really can't do anything to help him sleep more than the 4.5 hrs. He will do it when he is ready. Hang in there...there are many woman that post about their 4 month old that doesn't sleep this much at one time.
My baby is probably not normal, but he's been sleeping through the night consistently since about 5 weeks old. He went 8 hours at 3.5 weeks, 10 hours at 7.5 weeks. He sleeps for a 7-9 hour stretch regularly every night now.
Around 8:30, I change him, put his sleeper on and swaddle him with a Halo swaddle sack. We turn down the lights and TV in the living room and I feed him until he falls asleep then put him in his crib in his room. Sometimes this works great and he's asleep at 9, other nights I have to go through this twice, but he's always down by 11. Whenever he goes to bed, we follow shortly after.
It might help to know that I think his weight had something to do with it. He was 10 pounds at 3.5 weeks and 12 pounds at 7 weeks. We also put him in his crib to sleep from the first week we got home from the hospital, so he's not used to sleeping anywhere else. We knew we'd have to fight that battle sometime, and chose to do it right away.
Good luck! I think you're doing everything right, he'll sleep more when he's ready.
You sound about average. LO will usually wake up once or twice a night to eat. Typically, babies show a significant jump in the length of sleep between 8-12 weeks. Some babies will sleep better before then, but developmentally most are not ready.
Why are you giving the pacifier?
We give him the pacifier to soothe him back to sleep. He has been a crazy "sucker" since birth. It works really well. Right now he is really trying to get his hands to his mouth. He's gotten his thumb in a few times. So, at night when he wakes up, he's trying to get that hand in his mouth and he'll suck on it, not good at it, gets made, starts crying. Pop the pacifier in and he's out almost instantly, unless he's ready to get up to eat, then it doesn't work.
Also, we have had him in his basinette mostly from day one. No sleeping anywhere else, even for naps. Recently, last two nights, we have him in his big boy crib because he's getting too big for the basinette.
Other options regarding the pacifier? Are we giving him a negative way to soothe, maybe creating a bad habit that we will have to break later?
We do a bottle between 7 and 7:30, then bath, pj's, lotion, Then up to his room, dim the lights, and another bottle and in bed by 8:30. He's been sleeping until about 2:30. If he wakes up sooner than that, I try the paci first and usually it will get us another hour or so. Then he's back down and usually wakes around 5 or 6. Sometimes the paci will get us another hour then too, other times, like this morning, he needed a bottle at 5:30, then he let me sleep until 9
Once in awhile, he'll go until 3 or 3:30, but that's the exception, not the rule!
As far as the paci goes, I always offer it first during the night. Sometimes he just needs to self soothe. Pacifiers have been shown to decrease the risk of SIDS, so I don't worry about it being a bad habit. You can take the paci away later, but you won't be able to take their thumb/fingers away if they start sucking those! But that's just my thoughts on the matter, do what makes you feel comfortable!
Sometimes I have to get up around 4, just an hour after she eats, to soothe her with a pacifier/hold too. From what I read, it is fine for right now and they will drop it when they start sleeping more at night and develop their own soothing techniques.