Babywise/Baby Whisperer Moms, My Baby Won't Give up His 4/5Am Feeding...

Try not waking him up at 1030 for a feeding. Let him sleep. Once my daughter went down, I let her sleep. If she was hungry, she let me know. At eight weeks, she was sleeping through the night.

The sleep-feed at 10 can be very disruptive. Try him without. See what his natural sleep patterns are telling him to do.

Also, if he continues to wake at 4, give him a couple of minutes to soothe himself and then try patting his back. Don't pick him up and feed him unless he is really hungry.

I am such a believer in babywise. I did it for both of my kids - the first slept through at 8 weeks and the 2nd at 9 weeks and have been excellent sleepers ever since. For my 1st baby, I remember how hard it was to drop that early morning feeding. Her schedule was eat: 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm and 10pm. We fed her at 7pm, then played then put her down at 8pm sharp. then, at 10pm, we woke her up to feed her until she fell asleep and put her back down. You should concentrate on making sure that she has a full feeding at the late-night feeding. He seems to eat a good amount so he really should not be hungry. I hate to say it, but you might just need to let him cry when he wakes up at 4/5am. I remember my daughter doing that and it was awful but it didn't take very long before she slept straight until 7am. Stick with it, it does work. It is so hard to let them cry, I know. Maybe try to use the "Feberize" method (can't remember the exact name) where you let them cry for 5 minutes then pick them up and put back down and then let them cry for 7 mins, pick up, put back down, next time 9 mins, etc...until there is a longer period of time before you go in and pick up. It teaches the baby that you are there but that they need to learn to pacify themselves.

Why are you waking him at 10:30p to feed? Have you tried giving him an full bottle at like 8p and then see if he wakes up?
M.

There are several things you can do... First have you tried ignoring him at 4 or 5am. Some kids will wake up at this time and if you just ignore them they will go back to sleep. (everyone wakes up at night and goes back to sleep babies do the same thing) the only dif. is we go in and pick them up and they get used to it just like adults get used to waking up in time for work. OR have you tried feeding him more in the evening or adding cereal in the meal. Some are against it but i believe it's all per child. Some this helps some this doesn't. Good luck

We had a similar problem. When I discussed it with my doctor she said "you'd get up too if someone was going to feed you every night!" She then had us slowly decrease the amount of formula and increase the amt of water so that eventually it was all water. Once it was all water, he was no longer interested and quit waking. Talk to your doctor, of course, but that is what worked for us. Good luck!

Is he on breast milk or formula? We gave our son breast milk all day and his last feeding would be formula. My husband jokingly called it ' the whiskey ' because it helped him sleep longer. Also we noticed a difference when we added cereal. It helped tremendously
Also, our doctor recommended I take a washcloth or lovey and kept it against my skin to absorb my scent and then let him sleep with it. It seemed to comfort him when he awoke alone. Good luck!

I am a little confused with your post. First it says your son goes to bed but wakes up at 4/5am and only eats a little and goes back to sleep. Then it says you have to wake him but he is not very hungry. First off, every child is different. I would not compare him to your first son. Second, with my first child I was told while you can encourage a sleeping and eating schedule, most children will almost make their own schedule and it will continually change. They go through growth spurts. And my son did not sleep through the night until he was a year old! We were advised to just kind of go with the flow until he was about 4 months old and let him make his schedule. Of course he had to be woken up to go to daycare in the mornings but sometimes we would just put him in his carseat and he would sleep until he woke up at daycare. I am not sure what to advise you here. You can look up a lot of good information online in regards to infants sleeping and eating or talk to a doctor. I will tell you I had a friend who did not nurse her child at night because her Mom said she never had to nurse her at night. So she let the child cry and it was only after some time that she realized how wrong she was for doing so. Her child is okay now but smaller than most children the same age and now she has learned with any child after that to feed them whenever, and not rely so heavily on a schedule or her Mom's advice or even on comparing one of her children to another. Good luck!

We went thru the same thing. What we did took about a week to 2 weeks but worked well. When the baby woke for that one last overnight feeding, we'd pick him up and sooth him for about 20 minutes and then give him the bottle. Each night we'd do this and gradually, he started waking later and later until he finally slept the whole night. It takes time but we did find it to be less tramatic than just letting him cry it out (which worked for other circumstances but didn't work for this last overnight feeding-live and learn!). Anyway, try this and it will gradually reprogram his internal clock. It will take a little time but has worked for us so hopefully will work for you as well.

Good luck
Jules

Hello,

We had to cut the middle of night feedings with my daughter as well. When she woke in the middle of the night when she still needed to eat we would get her out of bed, change her diaper, feed her and then back to bed.
When we were cutting the middle of the night feeding and she was waking out of habit we would get her out of bed, change her diaper and then put her back to bed. Same routine as before just without the bottle. After a couple of nights she stopped waking up.
Good luck!