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@blackbird: my 4.5 month old just started doing this too! She still eats every 2hrs during the day and use to only get up once or twice. The last 1.5 weeks she's been getting up at 12, 2, 4 and 6 as well. The problem is she's so tired at bed time she goes to sleep on her own and when she wakes at night she seems hungry and eats well. I'm not sure what to do about it since she can go back to sleep ok after her feed but won't if I just leave her.

Maybe it's a growth spurt? It is part of a really long wonder week so I'm hoping she'll go back to normal soon.

@blackbird: I remember 3-4 months being hairy for sleep (no that it was ever great to start with). At three months, I think we were up every three hours (at least!) The worst was that early morning wakeup around 3 or 4 b/c she would get lively, so I would pull her into bed with me and barely get some ZZZs as I worked to get her back to sleep.

At her four month checkup, I remember the dr. saying she should be pulling four hour stretches. I thought, "Ok, sounds great, but how am I going to pull this one off?" THAT NIGHT the stinker did it. I wanted to go right back to the doctor and have him say she needed to do six hour stretches!

So hang in there! I'm sure things will get better soon.

ETA: I agree with your thinking about if it's at regular intervals, it might just be what he needs. That was my thinking....but then again, I'm kind of a softie and not up for hard core sleep training, so take that into consideration!

So around 8 weeks fia started sleeping 930-7ish with 1 wake to eat about 4am. At about 10 weeks she started 930-830 with wake to eat at 6. At 11 weeks she gave us a week of sttn from 930-730. She never has eaten again overnight since then. But at 12 weeks she started waking and needing soothed (with paci or rocking) to sleep a few times/ night. Got progressively worse and peaked suckiness at 16 weeks when I spent most of that week sitting up rocking her literally all night because she wouldn't sleep on her own. Got a bit better on her own but never went back to sttn until 14 mo (although as I'm sure you'll recall it did get totally livable at 6mo when we sleep trained)

@blackbird: ha. J lived his first year in a sleep regression so I don't know what normal babies do. Even at her worst D is better than J. You are way way ahead of us, drowsy but awake is not a phrase in D's world. It needs to be soon though because she has started fighting bedtime like no other. Yeah mom I was asleep at the boob but that doesn't mean you can lay me down. It's annoying to say the least. I need to change bedtime so that the feeding is not the last thing we do but that requires effort and between moving and remodeling we are not there yet lol

@jetsa: I was really perplexed at how to accomplish not nursing to sleep. I still rock and have white noise on, but leave a dim lamp on. For most nights, that has been enough to get her drowsy, but not asleep. I think she was already starting to have a harder time nursing to sleep, so she was ready for that.

@blackbird: By 5.5 months, it was like 2 or 3 times to nurse (that includes a super early morning one like at 4:45 am, which I always counted as a "night" waking). She dropped them gradually, by 7-8 months she was down to 1-2 times and then by 10 months, she slept through. Your LO actually sounds pretty normal for that age, aside from no long stretch. I think pre-regression, my LO could do 4-5 hrs as an initial long stretch. So maybe yours is going through the regression by adding one night feed?

E is 3 months old and recently went from 6.5-8 hour stretches at night to 5.5-6 hour stretches. It's still only 1 wake up but I prefer the longer stretches for sure. We need to work on getting them back.

My pediatrician seems to have different thoughts on sleep goals than some of the PPs. He wanted to see E getting 5-6 hour stretches by her 2 month appointment (which she was). And I know he'll want her to be consistently going 7-8 hours at night by her 4 month appointment.

So A was a terrible sleeper as you know, but at that age she was definitely down to 2 wake-ups a night. As others have said, BF babies sleep worse than formula babies, but he should be doing longer than 3 hour stretches! Could you try soothing instead of feeding at his midnight wakeup and see if he'll go back down?

Also around 5 months we had other issues like her waking for the day at 4am, but that's a different post

@blackbird: it sucks when they regress! You get kind of used to getting some better sleep yourself and then that little baby laughs and says "jokes on you!". Hopefully both our little ones get back to their better sleep soon!

At that age he was doing about 7pm to 4/5am. At his 4 month checkup my ped instructed me (I didn't even ask) to start weaning from that 4/5am bottle and when we were down to the last ounce let him CIO. We did that for about 3-4 days and then bam, 7pm-6am.
Right before that he did still have a midnight wake up as well. I did the same thing with the midnight on my own, I had started reading 12 hours x12 weeks and it was magic to get rid of that midnight wake up.
But he was bottle fed. Not sure how easy it is for BF babies, though it does have instructions for a BF baby.

Oh and I almost forgot, we also had a crazy week or two when he was around 4 months. I had gotten rid of the midnight for a couple of weeks and then he finally had his first true sttn night. Then the next night - wham. He woke up every 2 hours like clockwork. I was staying at my parents house in the same room with him and they had to work so I went back to bottles all night long and I felt horrible about it because it felt like such a set back, but if it was a growth spurt I didn't want to deny it to him. He eventually went back to a midnight and a 4/5am wake up and then back to only a 4/5am wake up. Shortly after is when my ped encouraged me to drop that last bottle and CIO.
Amazing how in the moment those times feel like hell, but 7 months later I almost forgot it even happened!

Umm, do we have the same baby?
About half the time I get a 4-5.5 hour stretch at the beginning of the night. Good nights are wake-ups every 3 hours, bad nights are every 2 hours. He nurses, usually a lot, and then immediately back to sleep. I just figured he was hungry and would never considered any different way without reading threads like this.
Currently he is in a crib in my room and I am a light sleeper though...