Ferber and Feeding

Clbehenna · April 2013

So DH and I are officially ready to begin sleep training and are planning to begin using the Ferber Method Friday night. I am reading the book, but one specific thing I'm wondering about that I haven't seen addressed in the book yet is what to do is LO still eats at night. Last night when he woke up, I tried to just get him back to sleep with his paci, but after 40 mins finally just fed him. He drank a full bottle at 10:30 and 3. I really need him to learn to fall asleep on his own, but don't want to leave him hungry. I've tried upping his bottles during the day to try and get him all the calories he needs during the day, but it's hard since he goes to day care and doesn't always finish bottles. He also gets solids once a day. I guess my question is do you still feed them at night and still make sure to put them back down awake? Or let them cry and learn to eat more during the day? That seems awful...

thepretzelchick · April 2013

I Ferbered out DS' 3am habit at 5 months. It had become just that--a habit--and was affecting his day feeds. I cut him off cold turkey and it only took one 45 minute Ferber session the first night and one 20 minute Ferber session the next night to kick his 3am wake. I went cold turkey simply because I knew his 3am feed was more habit than necessity. One way a lot of people cut out a MOTN feed is by slowly reducing the amount of milk you give him. Start with the 3am feed first. Reduce the bottle by an ounce every few days. You should see a difference in how much he eats during the day, especially in his first bottle of the day. Once that's cut out, tackle the earlier wake-to-feed. One thing that has helped my DS is getting a bottle as part of bedtime, even if it's only been 1.5 or 2 hours since his last one. His belly gets nice and full and he'll sleep peacefully from 9-7.

laurenhankey · April 2013

If LO is hungry then he's hungry. Have you tried moving solids up to 2 times a day? That seemed to work for my LO when she seemed to need more. How much formula/bm is he getting and how much solids?

danieliza1127 · April 2013

Chapter 6 is all about night time feedings.

Basically Ferber says that if the baby wakes once or twice a night, you can continue to do the feedings if you want to. Just do the feeding and put the baby right back to bed, even if he wakes and fusses. If he does, you would do the progressive waiting approach like you did at bedtime. Or you can wean the night feedings and he gives a couple different methods of how to do that. It's all in Chapter 6.

We did Ferber method and my LO continued to wake once a night so I kept giving him a bottle. I just followed the recommendation that as soon as he finished the bottle, I put him back in his crib and went back to bed. Sometimes he would go right back to sleep and other times he would fuss for 5 or 10 minutes and then go back to sleep. Finally about 3 weeks ago, he just started sleeping through the night on his own. I could have weaned the feeding but I just decided to wait and see what he did on his own. It's a personal choice, you do what you think is best.

pb_bride · April 2013

We started sleep training (Ferber) when DS was 4 months. We only did the bedtime so DS was still waking up 1-2x/night to nurse. Around that time, DS stopped zonking out at the breast, so I was putting him down awake after the MOTN feeds.

He weaned himself down to 1 MOTN feed at 4.5 months, and I weaned him off completely when he was 5 months. The thing w/DS was that he never had a predictable MOTN wake time. Some nights he woke at 2am, some nights at 4am, some nights at 11pm, occasionally he STTN. As a result, it was impossible to use Ferber's method to wean the MOTN feed. So, at 5 months, I just stopped getting up to nurse him, whether it was 11pm or 4am. He's been STTN since.

FWIW, I do try to cluster feed him in the evening. He nurses around 6pm, solids at 6:30 (~ 2oz veggies), nurses again at 7:15p before bed.

Ferber and Feeding

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