Bedtime/sleep & feeding

[MummyKP]

My lo has always been a pretty good sleeper, sleeping through at 5 weeks old. However, around 7 weeks, she seemed to start having horrendous colic, and began waking in the night and having feeds again. She would also not settle herself to sleep in her basket like she was doing beforehand too. She would only fall asleep on the boob and wake as soon as put in her basket unless in a good sleep. She's almost 10 weeks and is now down between 8:30-9ish (feeding to sleep still) and wakes for a feed around 5ish (give or take 30 minutes) then goes back off for around 2 hours, sometimes 3. She has always done a good long stint for the first half of the night as she bulks up in her last feed, and since newborn she's only ever gone 2-3 hours after her middle of the night feeds; if she woke at 3am for a feed, she'd wake around 5:30/6, and when she has her 5am feed, she's awake around 7:30-8ish no matter what. I'd like to bring her bedtime earlier as I feel she's ready for it but my worry is she will go down by 7:30, then wake for a feed at 4ish, maybe even 3, then wake again at 5:30-6ish, resulting in more nighttime feeds. Anyone had this issue? I'd love her to go back to her sleeping through but we are still riding this colic out atm which is what messed it up in the first place. I've considered doing a dream feed at 10/10:30ish but again, worried she'll get confused and then wake every 2-3 hours after it. I'm so worried that I'm making a rod for my own back by feeding her to sleep at bedtime and during her 5am feed that I just don't know how to go about it as she is too young to cio atm.

 

[staralfur]

She's still so young and doing any 8 hour stretch at all without feeding is incredibly lucky. It's entirely possible that she's just not ready to go two long stretches. My LO was waking every 1-3 hours at that age the whole night.

It's normal to feed babies to sleep, I wouldn't worry about creating bad habits. I also wouldn't push the bedtime forward as you're getting good sleep as is.