8 Week Old Sleeping Question

Fist of all you should not give your baby rice cereal until they ar 5-6 months old - their bodies are not like ours and they cannot digest it well. So the first problem is that you are probably giving him indigestion and it may be painful. If your ped. says its ok then you need a new ped. The American Academey of Peds and every other source out there says no solid food until later.

Second, he is still tiny and there are many nights when he thinks its time to get up and play instead of sleep. This will naturally work itself out. Trying to feed him more to help sleep is myth. He has to learn night from day.

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Can you sleep on a very full stomach? You're overfeeding the 3 am with the cereal. A baby's stomach is tiny, hold up a bottle against his stomach and imagine the ratio you would need to eat for you to have a similar feeding. You would not be comfortable to sleep after such a huge meal. My suggestion is take out the cereal(for sure) and give him the same feeding you give him before midnight that he is able to fall asleep with. Good luck, first baby's are wonderful but hard!

I am a stay at home mom of 3. I also had a big fat baby boy! Good Luck

At 8 weeks he is probably having a growth spurt. My son woke up more around this time so his sleeping schedule was messed up for about a week or so. When he wakes up at 4 I would suggest ignoring him if he does not seem distressed, he may go back to sleep on his own. However, I would probably not give him rice cereal in his 3 am bottle. At 8 weeks his digestive system is still immature and even if it didn't cause a problem at first it could upsetting his system (which could take a few days to present itself). Pediatricians and current baby books don't recommend this until the baby is at least 4 months anymore.

R.,

Hi my name is M. and I have a 6 month old little girl who sleeps through the night. When she was six weeks old I read a book that told me that if you rock your baby to bed thats how they fall asleep, so if in the middle of the night your baby wakes he has to be rocked back to sleep. You might try not rocking him to sleep and let him self soothe himself... It will be hard for maybe a week, but after that its smooth sailing, We stopped pacifiers and rocking and she does great. She goes straight to bed by herself. You rcould try cereal befor he goes to bed in the evening. Good luck!!!

Hi R.,
I started swaddling my baby only at night when it was time for bed. He seemed to really pick up on that as a bedtime routine and always went back to sleep as long as he had the swaddling blanket on him. Now he is 9 weeks and I can do that during his naptime too and it makes him sleep so much better, and since it helped him get on a schedule at night, he will still go back to sleep after waking up to eat even if not swaddled now. I also read The Happiest Baby on the Block and some of the techniques really work to calm him and help him sleep. Good luck

Stop feeding cereal in the bottle. He is too young.

Give him regular formulae or breast milk.

when my children were like that i used to give them a last bottle with a bit of horlicks or ovaltine in it only about half sppon full this seemed to help them sleep ,because it makes their stomache feel fuller ,
my children then slept all night long from the age of 3 weeks in fact 1 that i had to give the horlicks bottle too used to sometimes sleep till next day dinner and i had to wake her up
hope this helps

you may have to cut his nap time a little bit during the day, this also just might be a phase. sometimes when babies aren't going through a growth spurt they don't need as much sleep. it may be time to start tweeking his sleep schedule. i have four kids and they all changed their sleep schedules several times.

Whoa!! Big baby! Mine were both 8 1/2 lbs and I'm only 4'11 ..can't imagine how miserable you must have been! ha..

As for the sleeping question.. both mine did things like this. I tried rice cereal, I tried schedules, but nothing seemed to work. After a while, they seemed to just grow out of it.
You might try cutting back on the cereal though.. at 8 weeks, his tummy is tiny tiny, and he probably can't handle the cereal yet. He might not be sleeping well because of that after his 3am feeding.
Just try cutting it out for a few nights--whats the harm--its not like the cereal is working anyway..
Well, best of luck to you!
When my son was born and I was sleep deprived and miserable.. my mother told me that she was sure it would get better.. and that just before I get to the breaking point, where i am so tired I can't go on, the baby would start sleeping longer.
sure enough.. she was right.. this stage doesn't last forever!

Pay attention to the cues that your child gives you. My first child slept 6 - 7.5 hours at night when she was three weeks old and was sleeping about 9 hours every night by the time she was 6 weeks old. I never needed to give any rice cereal or anything else to "stretch" her. I kept a journal of when she ate and for how long, etc. I discovered that she needed to eat 8 times a day. If she ate 7 times, she would awaken for number 8. I got her on a schedule (actually, just tweeked her natural schedule to fit mine) of eating every 2.5 hours during the day, but sleeping for nine hours at night. A lot of it is expirimenting and discovering your child (they will all be different). One interesting thing that I discovered was that when I was tempted to keep a child up later so that they would sleep later, the usually either got up earlier than usual or just didn't sleep well at all. Though it sounds counterintuitive, if I put them to bed earlier, they would often sleep better and longer. One other thing to try is to put your child in bed awake and let him learn to put himself to sleep. Everyone (children and adults) wakes during the night and the ability to settle and go back to sleep is learned. That way if they awaken they can put themselves back to sleep without a bottle or rocking, etc.

I agree with the other person who said it's probably a growth spurt. If your baby isn't crying, he will probably fall asleep on his own, but if he's crying and won't go to sleep, I would rock him. I know that goes against everyone else's opinion, but I think that everyone is so anxious to have their children be "independent" that they lose a lot of the joys of having a baby. It is a wonderful feeling to rock a baby to sleep. My baby is 9 years old, and I have fond memories of nursing/rocking him to sleep. It all goes away too quickly and then they don't need you. LOL

Please don't feed him cereal. He may end up with food allergies later in life if you introduce food too early.

Hope this helps.

~A.~

My son is also 8 weeks old. He does the samething. He has reflux so he gets cereal in every bottle and he still stays up after his 2:30 feeding. I hope for the both of us that they do grow out of it. I know this isnt much help to you I just thought you might feel better knowing Im going through it too. Its normal. Ill think about you tonight when Im NOT sleeping.LOL! Good luck!

My daughter was up several times at night. She finally got big enough we would play and she would tire out. I would give her the cereal before she went to bed and we would be up at 4:00 and she would be up until about 6:00. She just finally grew out of it. Mine is 17 months now.good luck

Hi R.. Congratulations on the 9 lb baby boy. I couldn't have done that. My biggest was 7lb 1oz and I am 4ft 11in. As for putting the rice cereal in the bottle, you should put it in his bottle after his bath. Since it is after his bath, he will be relaxed and probably sleep longer. Try not to get into the habit of rocking him to sleep, that is a hard habit to break when they get to be a little older. They need to learn how to go to sleep on their own and the sooner the better. However, cuddling is the best.