4 Month Old Wakes from 3Am Onwards

Hi,
I have a 4 month old girl who is on the same schedule, only I'm feeding her when she wakes at 3 a.m. She's starving at that time, takes 6 oz in a flash, then goes back to sleep until 6 or 7. I would definitely say he's probably just hungry, even if he's not necessarily crying. My daughter does the same...she starts kind of thrashing around in her sleep so I quickly feed her before she starts crying. (don't want her to wake my toddler up.)
They're growing so quickly that it's hard to just expect him to sleep thru the night at this point without getting hungry. I bet that's what it is.
Good luck,
Lynsey

I doubt at 4 months hunger is the issue, his belly is large enough now to sustain sleeping through the night, especially since you are doing the dream feed. I am a loyal follower of the baby whisperer. I would either try swaddling the lower half of his body or I would try waking him up one hour before his habitual 3 a.m. (that right, 2 a.m) for 3 nights in a row. I have done this because my 6 mos old daughter (who still gets a dream feed) used to do it at 4 a.m and it worked. If none of that works I would add 1 ounce to his dream feed. When my daughter was 4 mos I went from a 3 oz dream feed to a 5 oz dream feed and she took it and she slept till 6 a.m. Its only now that we've introduced solids that we cut back again to 3-4 oz. Hope this helps!

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Personally I would try a bottle at 3:00, you're up anyway with him and it might be hunger that's waking him. Not sure. might be worth a try.

It sounds like hunger to me. The fact that after you go through all of that to put him back down at 4 and he re wakes an hour later tells me he is probably hungry. He is still young to go that long without a feeding in my opinion. I would feed him at three and see if he goes back to sleep longer. My kids only slept from around 11 to 5 or 6 if I was lucky at that age. It can't be anything else if he is healthy and sleeps for that long stretch comfortably.

Hi. Check with your Dr, but I think your son might need another feeding, even if it is just 4 oz. It is very possible he is hitting a growth spurt. My understanding is babies max out at 40 oz and then slowly decrease than intake when they rely more on solids. I also reccomend swaddling as your son is likely inable to self-soothe and he still has some of that moro reflex (the arm flailing) . That combo made it so hard for my son to stay asleep. You can always swaddle with one arm out. I went back to swadding TWICE with my son. Each time it helped him sleep better. Oh, and white noise can help with sleep too. It is best to choose a white noise with a bit of an ebb and flow to it as opposed to a droning rhythm. Some studies show the droning rhythm is bad for brain development, so you don't want to use the same white noise that an audio engineer would use, but rather the sound of rain , or ocean, or the dishwasher. Apple has a great white noise generator that we loaded to our Touch, so our baby has his own Touch with white noise for bedtime. : 0

Oh, and eight hours might be a big stretch for him. I think 6 hours is more the norm for his age.

Do you swaddle him, this could help with the flailing. Also when you do get up with him in the middle of the night, keep the lights off and do not speak or make eye contact with him. He will be bored and will most likely go to sleep earlier.. We also discovered that the cold baby wipe used to totally wake up our daughter, so we purchased a baby wipe warmer, it saved our lives..

Have you tried a pacifier? This may also help him self sooth. Try positioning him so that his head is up against the corner of the crib or a rolled up towel, this will mimick the feel of the womb against his head.

Dear K., At 4 months your baby may be teething but it is also OK for him to need something to eat and some comfort. If he is crying he needs something. He is still so little. Grandma Mary

I don't have a great answer for you, but I thought I'd share about my 4 month old- approx the same weight. She has been swaddled from the beginning, and just recently, I tried to remove the swaddle, but she woke herself up. She squirms out of it in her sleep, but she needs to start each time she goes to sleep (after a feeding) wrapped tightly. For the past four nights, she's been sleeping between 9-11 hours at once without eating. She's down each night around 6:45 or earlier, and gets up to eat between 4-5:30.
Also, she was doing what my first did- around 3 months waking every hour at night for days and days. She was impossible to get to sleep at night too. She would fall asleep and wake up after she was in the crib for between 10-30 minutes. She was so overtired that nothing was calming her down! I'm a Weisbluth fan (became so after everything he suggested worked miracles with my first), and I believe sleep is very important. We let her cry to sleep one night (45 min) and she's slept wonderfully ever since. She wasn't always this long a sleeper at night, but she puts herself to sleep without crying even when she wakes up and isn't hungry. I hope you find something to help your little one sleep better!