How to Get Baby to Sleep Thru Night (While We Sleep)

With both my daughters I was very lucky as they slept well early on. One of the things I did was stretch out the time they got their feedings to build on their ability to sleep through the night. There was usually a bottle around 5:30pm, and then I would give another bottle between 10 and 11pm. Usually they would take that bottle without waking up, or I guess I should say coming fully awake and getting back to sleep with a nice full belly and dry diaper seemed to get them through the rest of the night until 5-6am. As they slept later, I adjusted the night bottle back, so they would still wake up when I could spend some time with them getting ready in the morning before going off to work. This made for the most time for me to be able to spend with them (those special moments that are just the two of you), but it also gave a nice amount of time for hubby and I to spend together before the night bottle. BTW, I wasn't putting any cereal in those bottles either. Anyway, that worked really well for me. I hope whatever you try you have some nice sleepful nights ahead of you.

All babies are different. My daughter slept through the night at 2 wks. My almost 4 year old son still doesn't. Have you tried letting him cry? I just had to start doing that with my 11 mo old. He eventually does go to sleep. Sometimes its easier not to fight it and just go with what they want at least until a year.

Wow, I have a 5-month old who's the same weight and is on very close to the same schedule! Funny! It's totally normal & is a developmental thing, not a weight thing. By one year 80% of babies sleep through the night.

Don't put any cereal in any bottle. The AAP says this is a choking hazard, and there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that it actually does anything. Actually cereal has a lot less calories and fat than milk.

Most articles I've read (written by varied pediatricians) have said they believe sleeping through the night to be a neurological function and comes along with development (much like walking, some do it early and others do it later)

And if I read anyone else suggesting the book Babywise to another breastfeeding mother, I'm going to scream! (not sure if this poster is nursing or not, but it drives me nuts because I saw it on another thread. Demand feeding is preferable for so many reasons, that is why LLL, WHO, AAP, and every other real doctor recommends it. (the author of Babywise is a preacher not an MD, though he found some quack to put his name with him on the cover )

Don't force your children to do something their bodies are not ready for (speaking in general, not at anyone in particular)

If you MUST sleep train please do not CIO, read the No Cry Sleep Solution. If you're going to CIO, please use a gentle method like Ferber, and even he recommends waiting until at least 6 months.

You may want to try to cut out the late night feeding. If you're doing solids, see if backing off on some of them during the day helps (increasing milk). Napping well during day also helps night sleeping, so if there's any issues there, that's a good place to start.

If the waking at night is truly bothering you physically and you can't function well, I can see trying to do something about it. If you can get her to go back to sleep within a reasonable amount of time and you're feeling somewhat rested, then just let it be for a while, they often change their schedules as they get older. This stage of their life doesn't last forever, soon you'll be looking back at this just wishing you had your baby back!

Good luck. I know it seems tough now... just wait til they tantrum, what fun!

Oh and I also read that only 50% of babies actually sleep through the night (in parent's terms) by 12 months!

5 months old is very young. apparently she hasn't yet read the books that say she 'shouldn't' be waking up during the night. if she's waking up and EATING, she's telling you as plainly as she possibly can that she does indeed need that feeding.
i think CIO is perfectly appropriate for older kids and ones who have simply been accustomed to cuddling and will not self-soothe, but i think it's borderline monstrous to suggest it for a baby of only 5 months who is patently HUNGRY.
i totally sympathize with your sleep deprivation, but please please please listen to your baby. you know her little tummy can only hold a limited amount of food at a time, you know she is actually eating when you do feed her at night, and bless her sweet-natured heart, she's TRYING to self-soothe with the pacifier and can't because it's not giving her what she needs....nourishment. so you know what she's telling you already. thank all the gods you have such an accomodating baby and let her eat when she's hungry.
khairete
S.

oh its completely normal.
you can try to do the pacifier dance several nights in a row to see if she will pick up on the habit.
you can also stop that pre bedtime nap as well.
if you can push that an hour or so that might help.
but at that age i think one feeding a night is ok.
i am not sure at what age it stops being a hunger and becomes a habit to wake for a feeding. but they say it does. my son was 2...dr said he wakes out of habit, so stop the bottle. when i finally did at age 2 he finally slept all night. well that only lasted a few weeks, but thats another story.
good luck

HI:

I was about to tell you about the cereal before putting her down that worked for my baby when she was around 4 or 5 months and it worked but then after a few months later she started to do the same thing waking up in the middle of the night I think you shouldn't feed her she just wake up like sometimes adults do for any reason but it doesn't mean that we are hungry.(That is what my pediatrician told me)anyway good luck !!but this is normal my daughter now is 23 months and still waking up around 5 or 6 am and then she goes to sleep a little bit more.

I know it's hard. It will get better. Some babies don't sleep all night. Again, I know it's hard especially if you are a working mom. When my oldest was born, both my husband and I worked outside of the home. It was HARD because he didn't sleep through the night until he was 2yrs old. Looking back over the years with our other 2 boys, I don't know how we made it through all of those sleep deprived days. You may or may not understand this, but now that I have Jesus, everything is so much easier in my life. I know those early morning feedings are hard but maybe you can do a little reading or praying while you're awake. Use this as a time for both of you to be fed. And you know, there's no such thing as praying too much. LOL!
And please, enjoy all of these moments to hold her close to you. They don't stay little and this needy for long. And you will miss that closeness you have with her once it's gone.
Take Care,
N. :) SAHM homeschooling 12,7 & 2yrs old and married to Mr. Wonderful.

There are no set rules. As most people are saying, every baby is different. With my daughter (now almost three) we had to just cut out the night feedings (long story), after our dr. said it was okay. She would cry on and off all night and would have taken a bottle anytime if we gave it to her. When we stopped feeding at night and just comforted, gave pacifier, etc., she just ate a little more during the day if she was hungry. She's just not a good sleeper (still isn't a great sleeper, but better!).

My son (now 4-1/2 months) started sleeping through the night at just under 4 months. He takes his last bottle at 6 or 7 at night, goes to bed and wakes up between 6 and 7 in the morning! Two children two very different sleepers!!!

If your doctor says she can go all night without the feeding, then she'll be fine. She'll look for more to eat during the day if she's really hungry. In the meantime, soothe, pacifier or just give her time to fuss and get herself back to sleep. Sometimes my son sounds like he's really upset, but if I go in there and try to soothe it actually gets worse! If I just let him go a few minutes, he goes to sleep on his own. It's a lot of trial and error to see what works. Just try one thing consistently for a while. If it doesn't seem to work, try the next thing. And hang in there! My "bad sleeper" is almost three and we've survived!!!

We went throught this with our twins. That last late night feeding saved us for so long, but then they started to wake up again. What finally worked for us it to move thier bedtime to 6:30 instead of 6 and STOP waking them up. This wouldn't have worked early on as they actually needed the food. But by 7 months when this happened to us we were interupting thier sleep pattern, and because they weren't sleeping strait through they weren't sleeping as soundly (therefor the need to be soothed by a pacifier or a bottle). Hope this helps - sounds like you are well on your way to a healthy sleep pattern.

hi! my baby girl just turned 5 months old and has been waking up every TWO TO THREE hours. yikes. but we started being much more diligent about cutting out her evening naps and that has made a huge huge difference. we also feed her a LOT all evening so she goes to bed pretty full. if she gets sleepy in the evening, a little cat nap is fine, but we will entertain her and keep her awake so she doesn't have a really long nap. since then she has been sleeping 8 or 9 hours. good luck!! i know it's impossible to function w/o much sleep.

I think you're doing pretty well with your child getting up once a night! At 5 months that's pretty good. Even twice a night is ok at this age. If ou wanted to extinguish a feeding, you can just get up with her and not feed her at that time and gradually she will just not get up at that time. Babies generally sleep thru the night at around 1 but some dont't until 2. But just because she is not getting up to eat, doesn't mean that she won't get up, just to get up, for the rest of her kid life...

Hope this helps.
A.

my daughter will be 5 months on Sun and she does the same thing. She eats her veggies mixed with cereal at 8:30pm and has abottle around 9:30pm. She will wake between 4-am for another bottle and then sleeps until 6:30am. I don't think there is any way to eliminate her getting up at 3-4am. Her waking up is based on her metabolism at her age. As the baby gets older her body will sustain more because there is more fat stored in her body. Don't deny her the bottle when she needs it. She will outgrow it. Be patient. It;s tough to get up that enery, especially if you are working full time like myself.

I would def advise you to stop the mid night feedings...I would try giving her a little water in a bottle, shes not gonna want it, but when she realizes she isn't going to get milk, then she might just stay asleep...the other thing is to try and keep her awake and active until u get closer to the time you would want her to go to sleep and then give her the last bottle of the night. Another thing that helps is a warm bath, not every night but every other night maybe? and use the lavender baby bath. I have an 11mo old but she slept thru the night from day one, so i'm only giving suggestions, but she has started waking the last few weeks b/c of teething.

The main thing is that you need to get her as comfortable as possible!

good luck ;0)

We are living double lives. I'm having the same problem with my 8 month old who is about 19lbs (born 6 weeks premature). At leastyour daughter will take the pacifier. My son has NEVER taken to it. People tell me I should try the "cry it out" method when he wakes, including my pediatrician but it's toruture so I haven't stuck it out. I hope you find a solution and don't have to endure for an extra 3 months like I have. Let me know how it goes.

GM,

Every Baby is different. There is no real common age for sleeping for more than six hours a night until at least 8 or nine months in my opinion. I was the oldest of five kids, neither of the younger two did it, none of my three have, notr any of my friends until they were at leat eight months. She is sleeping a pretty long time without a bottle right now.

Her tummy is only the size of her fist and her metabolism is much faster than ours. Count your blessings that she is such a good girl for sleeping as long as she does, a lot of moms cannot say that.

I coslept with all of mine and they did sleep for longer periods than my friends who did not co sleep, but I also nursed my little ones and just open my shirt if they get hungry and we both nod back off together. I will do this again in January when number four arrives.

I am sorry that you are not getting rest at night. I know from freinds that it is very frustrating to get interrupted sleep every night, but these nights will pass quickly nad in a few months they will be but a memory. Hang in there girl, it will get easier.

sleeping through the night? ha! actually, the medical definition of "sleeping through the night is 5 hours. if your 5 month old is sleeping from 9-10 until 3 i'd say you were doing pretty good! my 5 month old woke up every 2 hours from 8-8. all babies are different, but really it sounds like your baby is doing pretty well on sleeping. some babies are 2-3 years old before they start sleeping all night long without waking up. she's still a little baby and i would just give her some more time if you can.

My 3-month old was doing the same thing - waking at 2:30 every night for a bottle. But then she would only drink a couple of ounces and fall right back to sleep. Finally, one night when she woke, I got up, took her out of her swaddle, then re-wrapped her, gave her her pacifier and put her back down. That seemed to do the trick for some reason - I guess cause she was used to getting up, being unswaddled, then re-wrapped and given her pacifier. After two nights of doing this she stopped waking up. Now she sleeps from about 9:00pm when she has her last bottle till 5:30 - 6:30 am. If your little one is still eating a lot in the middle of the night, I would guess she needs it. If it is just a bit, try going through whatever you usually do without feeding her and see if that works. Good Luck!

I would recommend the book Healthy Sleep Habits happy child by Marc Weissbluth. The book will help you understand how much sleep your baby needs, and how to get her that much sleep so she is well rested and so are you. From what you are writing, it sounds like she is ready to go down for the night around 6 or 7 which is exactly when she should be ready to snooze as her normal bedtime. My son is 16 months old and still is in bed by 7, and that's in bed for the entire night till he wakes up at 7 am. the next morning. Babies at your little ones age need consolidated sleep, and by waking her at 9 or 10 for another feeding, you are actually messing with her normal sleep rhythms. My advice would be to put her to sleep when she's tired around 6 or 7 and let her sleep until SHE wants to wake up and eat. I have a feeling you're going to find that she will sleep still her usual 3:30 feeding, eat, then go right back to sleep till 6 or 7... which is great because that will be her 12 hours of sleep for the night. You'll also find that with her sleeping better at night, her naps will be much better also. She should be sleeping a total of 14-15 hours a day at this point. So her naps are going to be around 2-3 hours total. I loved this book when I read it when my son was 4 months old. We were a mess with sleep schedules for naps and such and once I got him on a schedule that the book talked about, my son is still sleeping, at 16 months old, 14 or more hours a day and is a very very happy child (and so am I) I do have to say though, I know that everyone says they don't need the feeding, but seriously, some kids just do. My son when he's teething, or when he's growing will still wake up around 4 for a sippy cup of milk, then go right back to sleep. I've tried the cry it out with him, but he'll cry till morning because he truly is hungry. My advice for that... do what's best for your kid when it comes to middle of the night feeding. If it's once or twice, she probably needs it... if it's 5 times, then that's probably too much. Remember, you always know what's best for your little one :)

my DD didn't start sleeping through the night until she was almost 1 - now she's a great sleeper though

At 5 months my son still wanted milk in the middle of the night and his DR told me he didn't really need it either. The problem was getting him to realize that. At 6 months, my son weighed 22 pounds and at 17 months, now weighs 38! So he was and IS a big kid as well. He finally learned that he really wasn't hungry and learned to self soothe himself back to sleep. I can't imagine the paci is helping because it's getting her used to sucking at the same time every night and you want her to not want to do that.

I would give it more time. I have about 10 moms in our playgroup and well over half of them have kids who weren't sleeping through the night at 5 months.

Good luck!
M.

As many have posted, EVERY baby is different. Some sleep well at night, others don't. There is no set age for them to hit before they magically begin sleeping through the night. My DD is almost 6 months, and has been sleeping at least 10 hours a night since she was 4 months. I have only nursed her when she's actually hungry, and after 6 weeks of age, I didn't rush to feed her at the first noise (and I don't mean crying, just a little fussing) in the middle of the night. Often, she'd end up going another hour or so, and therefore the time she slept kept getting longer. At 5 months, you certainly don't need to wake them up in order to feed them. They'll let you know when they're hungry at this stage. There really isn't much evidence that the rice cereal keeps them fuller at night feedings, and over-feeding a baby can actually make it less comfortable for them to sleep.

Just keep hanging in there! This time will pass so quickly, and you'll wish for these days back!

Hi, I am a mother of two (son 3yrs and daughter 14months). I went through the same thing with my daughter not too long ago. It seems like most of the girl babies I know held on to at least one night feeding for a while, but they all grow out of it. The best thing to do is try and feed her as much as possible during the day. Also, try not to let her nap past 4 or 5 pm and then make her last feeding/snack a good amount, so you know she has had plenty to eat and is ready to sleep. I think 7-8pm is a good time to lay her down for the night, or later depending on how fussy/sleepy she is.

When you are really ready to cut out that night feeding, just don't feed her when she wakes up. I made the same mistake with pacifires, nursing, or a bottle of water. When she wakes up for that feeding just give her a little comfort/hug and lay her back down. She may cry the first couple of nights, but before you know it you will all be getting better sleep. It took my daughter two nights of waking up, hugs, and back to bed, to stop waking at night to eat.

I hope this helps!!
Take Care
J. L.

My daughter slept through the night at 8 weeks old. She went to bed between 6-6:30p and slept until 7a. If she happened to wake up in the middle of night, which was rare, I gave her a bottle up until about 4 months. It didn't seem to bother my daughter when I stopped it.

Your child is used to you feeding her in the middle of the night so she is expecting it. You can either give her a bottle of water & once she realizes that's all she'll get, she may stop it. Otherwise, just stop cold turkey & if she cries, then you'll just have to CIO.

I bet if you could see the times most people responded to your message, it would often be the middle of the night! You are not alone!

I don't know if you have the stomach for it, but if you could stop that middle of the night feeding, and let her cry for a few nights, she'll get used to not waking up. As you said, she doesn't NEED the feeding, but she is used to it, and wakes herself up for it. She'll make up for the calories she used to take during the night by eating more during the day and then she won't need those calories at night anymore.

I used the play the pacifier game but stopped. Now my 7 month old son is learning to soothe himself without it. The earlier the better!
Also is your baby sleeping in your room still? The minute we moved our son to his own room (at 6 months....too late), he slept through the nite. Part of it was that I didn't hear every little peep anymore, so I let him be a little more.

Good luck!

Maybe try putting oatmeal in her bottle instead of the rice. My little girl now 11 months, has been sleeping thru the night (7p-6/630a)since she was about a month old. Right away we started with her bedtime at 7. Her doctor suggested the oatmeal when she was about 2-3 months due to issues with the acid reflux. I found that giving her the oatmeal during the day in her bottles didn't settle in her stomach but she was ok with the one serving. He told us to give her 1oz of oatmeal per 1oz of formula. She was taking 5-6oz. Her last bottle we would give her about 6/6:30p. Maybe this will help. Good luck!
H.