Waking at night every hour to nurse

KingsGirl4 · November 2014

My little guy is 6 1/2 months old. He is sleeping in his own room. He usually goes to sleep around 8 and will sleep until about 12 on most nights. He nurses and then sleeps again until 2 or 3, nurses and is usually up every hour after that until he wakes up for the day around 7:30. I typically nurse him every time he wakes up because that is what settles him back into sleep the fastest. Occasionally he just wants his pacifier put back in his mouth, but that happens far less often than feeding. Should I try just rocking him back to sleep instead of automatically offering to breastfeed? I feel like he expects to eat when I pick him up and generally keeps moaning/crying until I do. My husband hasn't been very successful at putting him back to sleep. If my husband tries, he either wakes up and stays awake or I end up going in after awhile of listening to him cry while my husband rocks him, and nurse him back to sleep. Any ideas on how to help him sleep better or do you think this is more of a phase he will grow out of?

opheliainwaders · November 2014

I guess the biggest question is whether you need to make a change - are you able to sleep/doze through his nursing, or do you need to get more sleep than you're getting? If you are OK with it, then there's nothing wrong with letting it work itself out.

For us, we had to decide which of those wakeups we wanted to drop, and honestly, I had to let DH do it. It took about 3 nights of only DH doing the wakeups where I knew she wasn't hungry to make a change, and then she settled into a pattern of eating every 3-4 hours at night (which was so much better).

neverblushed · November 2014

With my DS, I sort of used the method above, once it was clear that he was waking to nurse for comfort and not really to eat. DH and I took turns comforting him without feeding. It helped that he rarely ever fell asleep nursing, even as a newborn, so he was used to being put down drowsy but awake. If he woke and cried an hour after really nursing and filling up, I knew he probably wasn't hungry, and I'd have my DH go get him and soothe or shush him until he was in a state where he could be put back down.

DS was my 2nd child. Because his sister was 4 when he was born, we always tucked him in with the same bedtime routine we used for her. If he woke at night, I would take him to the living room and turn on a dim light and walk around until he was calm and sleepy (usually just a short time.) Then I'd go through an abbreviated bedtime routine and put him down again. If it didn't, I'd nurse him and then try. Whatever worked!

lastminute2013 · November 2014

Maybe he's ready for solid food in addition to breast feeding? If so a snack before bedtime might help him sleep longer.

Waking at night every hour to nurse

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