Almost 5 month old questions...

aaronswife19 · August 2014

Hello. My son will be 5 months old on August 10th. He is currently fed expressed breast milk in a bottle. He gets 6 oz bottles, 5 times a day. Usually around 5am, 9am, 12pm, 4pm and 7pm. He goes to sleep great at night- he has his bottle, then bath, then bed around 730/745. We put him in drowsy, with a pacifier. He doesn't require patting or soothing. However, lately he's been waking in the night squirming and fussing at 1am, 2am, 4am and 5am. We can get him back to sleep by giving him a paci or laying hand on his back for a minute or so, until the 5am wake, then we feed him his bottle. Many times, he will struggle going back to sleep after the 5am feeding, and he is tired and fussy. Sometimes he will get up for 30 minutes, then go back in until 730 or 8. Sometimes later (until 830). Wondering if this is the 4 month old wake stuff, or if we should attempt a dream feed which would help him through. I realize his stretch from 7pm until 5am is great, but I'd rather him sleep more soundly. Wondering if a dream feed would help or if we should feed him when he first wakes around 1am or 2am (although that seems like going backwards to me).

Thanks for any help!!

mcgeeva · August 2014

Would you consider putting rice cereal in his bedtime bottle to hold him longer? The only reason I suggest that is my son is on BM as well and we found out he was loosing weight (switched nipples and daycare forgot to mention he was spitting up all his milk all day), since we switched bottles he is back to normal. But during that time ds woke every hour starting at midnight to eat until 5 am because he was hungry. Our doctor told us to start feeding him Rice cereal at dinner and putting it in his bottles to hold him and to help with spit up issues. Since we have done that he is back to sleeping through the night. So it is possible your lo is hungry and needs another feed since BM is so thin.

BGGP9196 · August 2014

I would not add rice cereal. There is no nutritional value and it is an old wives tale that it will make baby sleep longer.

Are you away from him during the day for work? It could just be that he misses mom! Or if you are away are you sure he is finishing each bottle fully? Some babies will reverse cycle if they aren't with mom during the day. My DD is doing this now but I prefer to feed her rather than pump so it works for us. Or of couse it could be the 4 momnth wakefuls and if so you just got to ride it out.

i would say give it a try (dreamfeed), if he is truly hungry you don't want him to go without food. Also if it is truly hunger he will outgrow the need for this feeding.

pmattingly927 · August 2014

He may be going through a regression. My baby, how just turned 5 months yesterday, went through a sleeping and eating regression right around the 19 week mark. It's a real thing. He only woke up once in the early morning hours (1am), but he typically sleeps all night. It lasted almost 2 weeks for him, but since that phase he is eating more and sleeping through the night again (10 hours min) I just got this book from the library that is very informative called "The Wonder Weeks" and it talks about the different phases and certain weeks that you can expect things to happen, of course every baby is different and there are no set in stone guidelines, but it is very informative. We also started cereal a few weeks ago and I feel that it helped a lot and is a great start to getting LO getting used to eating solids until he turns 6 months. Many people say that it is just a filler and has no nutritional value, but if you actually just read a label you will see that that is false. I actually found an old post from a couple of years ago that I will copy and paste below. I am not an expert, but I know how to read a nutritional label.

True facts about rice cereal

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LulubugSloan

Posted 09/19/2012

I want to start off with I have a degree in this area. I have a ba in culinary arts. Part of my studies is nutrietion and diets. With that said let me begin.

I want to correctly inform you ladies about the nutrietion facts of rice cereal. It seems to be a fad to skip rice cereal with the belief that it is empty calories, and a filler. I want you ladies to make a informed decision not a decision based on hear say. Question for ladies who claim that rice cereal is just a filler have you ever picked up a box and read the label?

So let's start with whats an empty calorie. An empty cal is a calorie with little to no nutrietion value. There is no such thing as a bad or good calorie. A calorie is just a form of measurement. With that said here is example of a product with empty calories( soda)

As you ladies can see there is no nutrietion value just a bunch of sugar. It's 140 cal wasted on nothing making them empty calories.
Here is the label of rice cereal

As you ladies can see with just 1/4 of a cup/ 50 calories it is full of sorts of nutrietion, 45% of daily iron, 25 % of the daily intake of different vitamins. In that's only in 50calories worth making this rice cereal nutrient rich, which is contradicting to the common tought that's has been going around that rice cereal is empty calories.

Let's talk about a balanced diet. One of the most important things is having a well diverse diet. Eating fruites and veggies of all different colors, and eating whole grains. Guess what rice is, it's a whole grain. Isn't it thought of starting our kids off eating right? so wouldn't rice cereal be one of those steps. Here is the food pyramid.

Next subject- the reason why we start inducing foods at 4-6 months is because BM can no longer meet all the needs of ur lo. One of the main things is iron . At this time ur child's own natural iron supplies starts to deplet which BM is not rich in. Here is a list of veggies that are concidered iron rich
https://www.vrg.org/nutrition/iron.htm
As you can see there are not to many that a baby can have as first foods.

Here is a few mor websites about baby nutrietion
This one I chose because it talks about iron supply in breast milk.
https://pregnancy.about.com/library/blfeedingfacts.htm
This one talks about the nutrietion needs.
https://m.whattoexpect.com/first-year/nutritional-needs-for-babies

And this one talks about the benifits of cereal
https://www.ehow.com/list_6871073_reasons-rice-cereal-early-infant.html

The whole arsenic thing is unrelated to this post, so please if that's umtour agenda there are threads related to that post there. I just wanted to provide factual info on rice cereal since we are now at tha 6 month mark and ladies will now be face with that decision. It's up to you wether or not you want to do rice cereal with your lo, or any cereal.

That fact is rice cereal is in no way a filler or empty calories for lo.

I personal do oatmeal. Tried rice cereal but it caused constipation, oat meal has worked like a charm though.
( please excuse my spelling and grammar I am on a iPhone)

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True facts about rice cereal

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