Hi All,

I wondered if you could please offer a bit of advice ...

My LO is 18 weeks old and has always been quite a good sleeper (luckily!). He has practically been sleeping through the night since 10 weeks. For the past 10 nights my LO has been waking up exactly the same time every night, which is 3am. The first few nights i went into his room and gave him is dummy, to which he would immediately fall straight back to sleep. However, he has then been waking at 4.30am (exactly the same time every night!), to which again i would go in and give him his dummy. I have then been finding myself going in and out of his room, until he has been waking up fully for the day (6am-6.30am),giving him his dummy. After about a week of this i thought it was getting a little out of hand, so i thought maybe he was hungry. So for the past 3 nights i have been offering him his milk (FF). He has only been taking 3oz max the past 3 night, therefore to me he is not really hungry (during the day he will clear 7oz bottles- he has 5 bottles per day). I don't really want to get into the routine of now feeding him during the night, as to me only taking 3oz is that he is not hungry- or am i wrong??! The past 3 nights that i have fed him he's went back to sleep and has still woke up a couple of times but not enough that i need to go into his room. He's woke up either whined once then fell asleep (maybe in his sleep?) or 'oohed and ahhed' for a minute then feel back to sleep.

I have heard about a 4 month sleep regression, is this it? I don't know if it is, as generally he is very good up until 3am (i have heard babies are up most of the night?). We have a bed time routine, where at 6pm-6.15pm (depending how long he can stay up, i generally find my LO cannot stay awake past 6.45pm), of bath, winding down time, bottle, bed. He does not go to sleep with his dummy (only uses it during the day for naps, although i do also give my LO a teddy blanket thing to feel in the hopes that in time he won't need his dummy!).

Sorry for the very long post! I just wanted to give a bit of a picture about what i have been experiencing. If anyone can offer any tips/advice i would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Anyone please?

I would say hes hungry even if it is only 3 oz. Unless it was one or less I would class it as hunger x

Thank you for replying!

I didnt look at it like that, that makes sense, 1oz or less then probably not hunger- thanks x

no worries, my dd always has around 28 - 32 oz a day. If she doesn't get the full amount in the day or if she's having a bit of a spurt then she wakes for a couple more in the night. Sometimes a few times x

I could have written this 7 weeks ago!! My LO was exactly the same and it's finally got better the last week again he was sleeping 8-7 at 8 weeks then 16 weeks it all went downhill it started with 3am wake up and putting dummy in until he wanted up at 5am
Then he decided to bring his bedtime earlier to 6.30 then he woke at 12.00 and 5 am I gave bottles both times then he started going 7-5 bottle and back to bed until 7am and today 7-6 then back to bed until 8!!
So we are getting there but I don't think there is any quick fix just have to go with what baby wants but I really feel putting him to bed earlier helped.

I really hope my LO sleeps as long as that soon! I feel a little silly when I think about my post considering some babies are up all hours of the night. However, I think when you are used to your LO having a certain night time pattern once they divert from this you begin to question why!! I will just have to see what happens in the nights/weeks to come and just go with the flow! x

At around 4 months babies stop sleeping like babies (either awake or asleep) and start sleeping like adults (sleep cycles).

I would suggest it is likely when he gets to a lighter part of his sleep cycle he goes to suck his dummy in his sleep. When it is not there he wakes up. Other reasons for waking when he is in a less deep part of his sleep cycle could be if he is uncomfy, too hot, too cold or hungry.

The sleep cycle is the reason they wake at a similar time every night. You may also notice he wakes from his naps after a similar amount of time each nap. In my experience it was about half an hour.

My LO seemed to wake at 30mins if not she would wake after 1 hour if not then 2 hours if not then 4 hours. If she hadn't woken after 4 hours he would usually sleep til morning.

I hope that makes some kind of sense. I found there was nothing I could do to get her to sleep better during this time however she has now grown out of it.

Thank you, yes it makes sense. It is interesting that you say about waking after the same length for each nap, as my LO does that. I will just have to wait until my LO grows out of it, hopefully not too long! x