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Much needed sleep!

  1. #1
    bailey is offline Registered User
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    Nov 2004
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    hong kong
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    Much needed sleep!

    My son is now 5months and still not sleeping through the night. He has a late feed at around 11pm then always wakes up at around 3am, is it time to start control crying?


  2. #2
    jane01 is offline Registered User
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    Just my totally inexpert (other than being a mum), non-medical opinion:

    * YOUR BABY IS VERY NORMAL
    * 5 months is a little young to try controlled crying, but not out of the question if you are desperate
    * Is your baby on solids? I would expect a baby to be capable of sleeping through when they are on 3 solid meals a day. Note I say capable, not that they will. Solids aren't recommended until 6 months, but some people start early. I'm not saying you should start solids early in the hope of more sleep. All I'm saying is that I wouldn't expect a baby to sleep through until they are getting 3xsolids a day, although some do.
    * If you are bottle feeding, how much does baby take at 3am? If he is only taking a little bit, he might be waking out of habit and it might be time to cut out the 3am bottle. If he is drinking it all, well, it seems he is still hungry.
    * What time is his last feed at night? I used to give my daughter a last feed when I went to bed, around 10pm. She wouldn't wake up for this feed. I'd just pick her up and b/feed her. At this age they feed quite well in their sleep. This feed is sometimes called a rollover or dream feed.

    All babies are different, but my daughter slept through from about 6.5/7months. By then she was on 3xsolids a day. She continued to wake up at 3am. I gave her whatever comfort she needed to get back to sleep, but didn't feed her. I had a "not before 5am rule". Within 2 weeks she was reliably sleeping through the night.

    I dropped the 10pm dreamfeed at about 10 months'ish.

    Good luck and I hope this helps. I totally understand that 5 months of not getting a good night's sleep is tiring and I know how you feel.


  3. #3
    pokfumum is offline Registered User
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    Pokfulam
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    Hi Bailey

    Jane01 is spot on with her advice but I just thought I'd reply as my son is also 5 months and has gone from waking several times a night to sleeping through until 6am in the last two weeks.

    He started waking three times in the night about three weeks ago, but wasn't really interested in a feed and would go back to sleep so quickly on my breast that I decided to leave him to grumble and see if he would settle himself. After three nights he wasn't waking up at all.

    Now I don't even wake him for a feed before I go to bed, but he will sometimes wake up around 10pm for a five minute top up. I've started giving him rice cereal at 5pm, but he's not really interested so it seems that for now my breast milk is enough. This was a surprise for me as I was giving my daughter a big bottle of formula at 6pm, and she was much smaller than Finlay!

    My experience with controlled crying is that my husband has to literally pin me down on the bed to stop me from going to the baby, and our rule is that we won't let him cry for more that 10 minutes without going in to pick him up. If that settles him then we put him down again for another ten minutes. We've never had to do this more than three times before he goes off to sleep.

    I hope this helps to reassure you that you should be getting a full night's sleep before too long! I know we are extremely lucky and of course all babies are different, but yours is certainly doing what we would expect of a healthy 5 month old.

    Good luck!


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