My 8.5 Week Old Baby Has Gone from Waking Twice in a Night to 5 or 6 Times ?

Growth spurt.
ALWAYS feed on-demand.
Infants, also do what is called "Cluster feeding" which means they even feed every.single.hour.
Because, they are growing so fast and developing.....thus the importance for feeding on-demand.... 24/7, day and night.

An infant, has growth-spurts every 3 weeks. So 9 weeks is coming up.
THEN, a baby will have growth-spurts at 3 months old, 6 months old, 9 months old, every 3 months.

During growth-spurts, their intake needs increases as well as the frequency of feedings. It is biologically, what is needed... so that intake keeps UP with them and their growing.

all the best,
Susan

Hi there,

Sorry your first reply wasn't kind or helpful! :)

My daughter is 3 years old, so I don't remember that phase very well. But I do remember that she was a great sleeper for the first 3-4 months, and then didn't sleep well after that. My husband and I were beside ourselves. What was wrong, we thought? She was sleeping so well, what are we doing wrong? Or what is wrong with her?

The thing I've learned these past few years is that babies and children do not develop linearly. They might seem to master something, and then backslide. And that's okay, that's the way they develop. We as parents just have to be patient and we'll get back to that place again.

Don't worry. It's hard when they don't sleep because we get sleep deprived, but I think at this young age it's pretty normal. Just try to do whatever you can to get some sleep yourselves.

We're due in three weeks with our second child, so I'll probably be writing similar questions here soon. :)

Hang in there and I hope you all get some sleep!

H.

My 11-week-old is the same way! His might be a growth spurt though. It's killing me to go back to not sleeping.

Only thing I can suggest is that he might be getting cold at night. Don't know what the weather's like where you are, but here, the nights are getting really cold. We've switched from onsies to footie pj's for sleeping, and I just ordered a sleepsack which I'm hoping helps.

You've probably heard the standard advice of keeping it quiet, dimly lit, and boring at night. When he wakes up, feed/change him, whatever you need to do, but keep talking to a minimum and don't play with him. Hopefully he'll learn that nighttime is for sleeping.

As for Stacy - I really hope that you didn't mean that the way it sounds. Cause really, troll much?

hm.... my son is very restless now (he's 9 weeks) while sleeping. he used to do 4 1/2 hours and feed twice as well, but now he's been so erractic.
Does he sleep in the same room as you or does he sleep in his?
Mine has recently started to fight sleep until my husband and I stay in the room for the night. Then, he will wake up so many times just to make sure we are there (no joke, sometimes all i got to do is hold his hand and tell him we're still in there and he falls back asleep)...
Another thing is...how is the noise in the room? do you keep it quiet, or have music or something constantly playing? mine needs noise all the time, or he wakes as well. it took me a while to figure that out :( i'm hoping he grows out of it lol.
if you want to talk more about the boys' sleep issues you can message me ... good luck. hope you figure out .... but it doesn't sound like a growth spurt really...or he'd be eating at every re-settling too...

Actually this sounds exactly like "sleep scheduling". Between 7 and 8 weeks babies are more awake and alert, not the newborn sleepy almost all the time. They are just now being able to start telling the difference between night sleep and day naps. This is also when they start learning to self soothe themselves to fall back to sleep, or depending on you to soothe them to sleep or feed them to sleep. Now is about the time you have to determine what kind of parenting you want to do...feed to sleep everytime during the night when woken, soothe them to sleep without food, and shove a pacifier in their mouth again, etc. This is also about the time when some babies will find thier thumbs and use that. This is setting the tune for your baby's sleep routine that may last all thoughout their first year (not that he'll wake up every three hours down the road, but there will always be night wakings) and how are you going to deal with it. I strongly suggest getting the book "healthy sleep habits, happy child" by Dr. Weissbluth. It is the most accurate book on sleep per perdiatricians.
AND this does NOT sound like a growth spurt time. Growth spurts are at 6 weeks, 9 weeks (give or take a couple days) not at 8 weeks. This is spelled out in every baby book, and goes into more detail in the weissbluth book. Growth spurts are only 1-2 days and you're on day 3. Get the book, it will be a god send when he starts doing this big time at 4 months, and teaches you how to help your baby (at 4 months old) quickly get to the point where 90% of the time not wake up the whole night!!! .

My son went from increasing his intake and stretching out his feedings to 8oz every two hours even through the night at just 2 weeks. He couldn't get a enough to fill him enough to sleep more than 2 hours and would be starving again! We had to start him on cereal (per doctors orders) during his last feeding before bedtime. That stretched him back to every 5 hours. Again, I said this was per doctors orders and he was taking 8 oz or more at each feeding.

Is he too hot? Too cold? Do you have something in his room to block out noise (I use a cool mist humidifier year round)? Sometimes it's the simplest, most obvious things that we overlook.
Sorry about the nastiness in your one response. Kudos to you for wanting a decent night's rest for you AND your baby.