Hey Moms!
I need some bedtime help! I should start by saying that the way things are now are going REALLY well – I just want to start Eli (and Mommy and Daddy) off on the right foot! Let me start by explaining our current bedtime routine:
6:00pm (ish) Nap for about 45 minutes to an hour
7:45-9:00pm (ish) Playtime!
9:00pm-10:00pm Naptime!
10:00pm Eli is woken up to eat
11:00 First good night sleep
3:30-4:30(ish) Wake up to eat
5:00am (ish) Back to sleep
7:00am (ish) Wake up Eli to eat and get ready for the day for Mommy and Daddy
NOW – here’s the thing. That 4am feeding is too close to the early morning for Mom and Dad and I don’t feel like I can totally nurse him well because he’s so sleepy. We’d like him to wake up to nurse more around 2-3am so that he wakes up and is up for the day between 6am and 7am. That would make things for us a ton easier. He usually takes a pretty good mid-morning nap anyway, so we just need him to not be woken up to eat at 7:00, especially now that he’s going to be in daycare.
So how do we an establish a routine to get him to wake up once in the middle of the night and then be up for the day between 6 or 7?
A few things to keep in mind:
– Eli sleeps in our bed currently, but we get up to nurse him so that he’s awake to eat enough
– Eli is going to be transitioning to a crib in about a month (any advice on how that works is also welcome)
– I am NOT ready to give up the middle of the night nursing, so don’t even try.
– I am NOT strict on a routine. I need more guidelines. I am much more baby-led than routinized.
Okay? Got it? Ready…GO!
Have you looked at that On Becoming Babywise book? I read it and it seems a happy medium between 100% demand feeding and 100% routine. And I understand it works pretty well to get baby to distinguish between daytime hours (when we nap) and nighttime hours (when we sleep a bit longer…with a feeding in the middle). However, this is all speculation as my bun’s still in the oven!
Matt and I did Babywise with Elijah and it has been FABULOUS! Elijah was sleeping through the night by 6 weeks. He’s almost 9 months old now and sleeps 12 hours at night, goes to bed without a fight, and is a happy, happy, happy camper!
Good luck!
My LO drank 3.5 oz of breastmilk every 2 hours until he was 7 mohnts old (with night feedings). He had a growth spurt and increased his intake to 5 oz every 3 hours with one middle of the night feeding recently. He is on the smaller side and still less than 5 percentile for weight.My niece is 4 mohnts old and drinks 7 oz of breastmilk every 4 hours. I wish my LO could drink every 4 hours.
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I’ve always been of the mind that you let them sleep as long as they want to at night, and you pray to Jesus that it gets longer and longer. So if it were me, I would just leave his schedule as is and follow it. He’s still nursing at night like you want, and I think it would be better to wake him up in the morning (like you are now) than in the middle of the night. If you have your heart set on waking him up in the middle of the night, then just set an alarm. Hopefully it doesn’t backfire on you and he wakes up both at 2 and 4.
We read and enjoyed methods from The Baby Whisperer and the No-Cry Sleep Solution.