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Sleeping and 2mo update
Abe had his two month appointment today. He weighs 13lb 11oz and his almost 24inches long. He is a big dude!! We came home with a prescription for an antacid...she thinks he may have a bit of GERD going on.
Now. The sleep issue. Here is what is currently happening. We change him, swaddle him, nurse him and he falls alseep and we put him down. He sleep for about 4-5 hours. Then he wakes up and eats ever two hours. So for example. Sleep from 9-12:30. Eat. Sleep from 1-3. Eat. Sleep from 3:30-5:30. Eat and then sleep.
She said that was a lot of eating during the night for him and that we shouldn't put him down after he falls asleep nursing. That we should put him down drowsy. I've read this somewhere. But now I'm not sure how to break my routine. Nurse him and then read? I'm thinking that he is going to nurse himself to sleep no matter what. I'm so confused.
Re: Sleeping and 2mo update
I'm thinking he is comfort nursing. So maybe bottle feed before bedtime and when he finishes, let him use the paci and rock until he falls asleep. Gradually decrease the amount of time you rock him until you are putting him down drowsy.
I would say this is probably how I did it with Taylor. Except, I had no patience to wait until she fell asleep, so I managed to teach her to fall asleep on her own, by putting her down when I ran out of patience...which happened to be when she was drowsy
Hmmm... I think we nursed/fed to sleep so I am not sure how much help I will be able to be, but what if instead of changing and swaddling him before eating you left him unswaddled, changed him then swaddled and set him down to sleep... or adding a bath after nursing at bed time? I have heard that works for some kids (mine get super excited about baths and it is not a soothing time for them, it is playtime lol)
Also what about moving bed time up a little? Like starting the bedtime routine at 8PM so if he went to bed at 8:30 slept for 4 hours that would be midnight and maybe he would stretch it out until 3AM or 4AM which is much more managable to think about than 1 or 2... that is what we started to get the boys to STTN... we put them down at 8, then fed them at 12 and 3 and then they were up again between 7 and 8... then eventually we cut the midnight feeding around 4-5 months and cut the 3AM one between 6 and 7 months
I don't know, all babies are different, but that is just what worked for us... hopefully you find something that will work for you!
I feel like Nolan was still getting up twice at night at 2 months. With the longest time at the beginning like Abe and then every 2-3 hours after that and up for the morning at 7. Right now is hard to judge, too, because there's usually a growth spurt around now. From about 2 months to 3 months he started dropping one of those feeds, so he was usually getting up about once a night and it was around 3-4 in the morning. Then magically at 3-3 1/2 months he started sleeping through the night. I honestly don't think I did anything to cause it. He did it himself AND he was still nursing to sleep. In fact, I nursed to sleep until he was almost 7 months old. At 6 months he had started waking up again in the middle of the night and the pedi said it was time for putting him down awake. I just tried to stretch it another month until I just got so exhausted I decided it was time for Ferber.
One thing that I know helped was not rushing to Nolan every time I heard him squeak. Sometimes we would just lay there and see if he would fall back asleep. (even when he was in the bassinette in our room) Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't. I'd wait about 3 minutes then go check on him. I would try to see if just changing his diaper would settle him back down. If not, he went on the boob. He was always good about going back down after a 20-30 minute feed. But he was never drowsy when we did it, always asleep by then. But it's not like he fell asleep within 5 min of nursing. That's when I knew he was just nursing for comfort or to get back to sleep instead of because he was hungry.
Try to put him down drowsy, but he may not be ready. Some babies aren't at this age. Trust your gut. Good luck! Sleep is tricky!
This was pretty much us. Abe sounds normal to me. I still nurse Lillian to sleep about 50% of the time. As long as the baby isn't waking up every couple of hours all night long, I don't see the issue, especially at 2 months. It is always a good idea to start putting the baby down drowsy but awake, but, if it doesn't work, I don't see the problem with nursing to sleep if it isn't causing a problem. I think even Ferber (or maybe it is Weissbluth - or maybe both) says nursing to sleep isn't necessarily a problem.
We encountered a problem when Lillian hit the three month growth spurt - she started nursing every 2-3 hours (dropped the long 5-6 hour stretch), and then wanted to nurse more and more and more, until she was nursing every 1-2 hours at 5-1/2 months, and we had to Ferber to stretch her back to nursing only twice a night. But, once we did that, she just started sleeping through the night on her own, despite nursing to sleep much of the time.
I think what you are doing sounds normal too. Liam was doing that exact same thing until about a month ago. I nursed Grace once at night until she was one year old. We did use ferber with her so she put herself to sleep but still woke around 3 or 4 to nurse and would go right back down until at least 7. I didn't mind this so we just went with it. She dropped that last feeding right at 12 months.
we are dealing with this right now
I think we will start ferber sometime between 5 and 51/2 months. He is waking SO much, he has done ok the past 2 nights but for 4-5 nights before that he was waking every hour...ugh. I am trying not to feed him everytime he wakes up but it is hard.
I agree with most pp that this sounds totally normal. He's still so little! For the life of me, I don't remember exactly what Owen was doing at that age, but I think it was something similar. It's hard to say what "bedtime" was in those days, because he would sleep in the bouncy chair downstairs with MH and I while we ate dinner, watched TV, etc. He usually woke up around between 12:30 and 1:30 and MH would give him a pumped bottle, and then we'd head upstairs to bed and he would sleep in the bassinet until about 4 or 4:30 I think. Then it would be back to bed until I'm not sure when -- 7? 8? (I really should've written this stuff down.)
Anyway, I don't think you're doing anything wrong. Go with your gut on this one.
I'm pretty sure Adrian had the same sleep wake up times as Abe at that age. At first I'd feed him at night immediately. But then I decided I'd give him the pacifier and rub his little head first. If he was still fussy a couple minutes later, I'd feed him. He usually gets up once now to eat, occasionally twice, which is fine with me.
We do put him to be drowsy and have since early on, mostly because I couldn't wait to get a bed time routine going as a new mom...that's one of the things I looked forward to the most. After he eats, I change his clothes and diaper. Then we go upstairs and read books (which he loves). Then we sing, pray and I put him down with his paci, give him a kiss and leave.
He is a big guy!
The pattern seems a lot like Felix too. We'd feed him & put him down at 7, we'd wake him at 11 to feed again and then he'd wake between 3&5 for another feeding. Just after the 2month mark he dropped his middle of the night feeding and slept through.
You could also try to gradually decrease the amount of food you give him at the 5:30 feeding.