Waking LO to feed??

kb&mb · January 2013

In a perfect world I would like Noah to be happy and content before feedings but it seems he is mostly screaming. Sometimes he wakes on his own, sometimes we wake him...and we usually change him before a feeding to avoid him being too sleepy during feeding. FYI, he is mostly on a 3 hour schedule and he is just over 5 weeks old.

Just wondering how your LOs compare.

StephRN23 · January 2013

K will be 5 weeks Friday. We don't wake to feed anymore, she eats about every 2 to 3 hours. During the night she is sometimes too sleepy and will only eat for a few minutes. I'm hoping eventually she will just drop a feed at night and sleep for a longer period of time. Unless your pedi is concerned about weight gain, usually you don't have to wake to feed.

kb&mb · January 2013

He is gaining weight fine. He sleeps most nights for 5-7 hour stretches so I want to make sure he eats enough during the day. And when I don't wake him, he will sometimes sleep for 4+ hours during the day. Thus making me want to make sure he eats enough.

ZoeMay06 · January 2013

We don't wake to feed anymore either. Our pedi said we didn't need to once she regained her birth weight. With my older one, I'd often do a "dream feed" right before I went to bed to try to hold her off a little longer once she got a little older. It seemed to help her sleep longer at first but then I started skipping them and she'd usually wake up at the same time as if I had done it, so I stopped the dream feeds altogether.

aimee413 · January 2013

I wake my lo but only if she is near 4hrs since her last feeding. I usually only need to do it once a day. All of her other feedings are 2 to 3 hrs apart. She does really good for me at night so I just continue to keep doing what I do.

maven212 · January 2013

Hey - so I wake my LO to feed if she gets past time. "Time" is every hour or two at night. We do a ten minute feed. Since we have moved to this schedule, our awake time with LO is actually really pleasant. She coos etc.. Before then, she basically slept and screamed.

We also change her after the feed for two reasons - hunger pain seems to be more important to her than diaper pain. We hit threat level midnight very quickly with hunger pain. Changing her before the feed almost guarantees a complete flip out. She also usually wets herself during the feed anyway, so an extra ten minutes in a pee soaked diaper saves us an extra change at the end, affording us more cooing, snuggle and sleep time.

During feeding we keep her awake by stroking her neck or feet, sometimes her back.

Slowly, we will start to make the feeds longer and stretch out the hours between feeds - but for the time being we wake her.

starsinger17 · January 2013

At LO's 1 month appointment our doctor said we can push his feedings to every 4-5 hours and 6 at night so we pushed back his feedings to every 4 hours. He rarely goes 5 hours and then we just let him go at his own pace at night. He ranges from 4 hours on bad nights to 6-8 hours on good nights.

lebongo · January 2013

Our pedi told us that as soon as we regained our birth weight we no longer needed to wake to feed. I was concerned at the stretches she'd go btwn feeds sometimes when she exceeded her 2-3 hours but my pedi looked at us like we were crazy and told us to enjoy the down time and get some more sleep. DD started sleeping through the night (5-7 hours) right before she was 2 weeks old and has done so since (8 weeks tomorrow). We were told that babies will wake up if they're hungry and to enjoy the stretches of sleep.

This and that · January 2013

At night LO only goes about 11,5 hours of sleep between feedings, so no need to wake him. My lactation consultant told me that since he's still not sleeping long at night, I might want to wake him to feed at 23 hours during the day which might help him at night.

m i l l y · January 2013

E wakes up on his own, but he screams a lot when he wakes. I feel so bad for him. He usually eats every 2-3 hours. Some days he eats as often 1.5 hours or last night he had a 4 hour stretch. He's 7 weeks old now.

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