I'm clearly fantasizing about sleeping for more than 3-4 hours at a stretch! How many weeks/months was your LO when they started dropping nighttime feedings? Did you change anything in your routine to help them get there?
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She did it by herself at about two weeks old. The only thing I did was try to keep her up for around two hours starting around 8/9 before we would all go to bed around 11:30 in the early days. Then her bedtime started slowly creeping down over the months. I would try to feed as frequently as possible in the day as well and if cluster feeding was happening in the evening it was actually positive I think for sleeping longer at night.
ETA: she was probably 2 months old when she was doing between 6-8 hours, usually 6 and just one or two night feedings. I think I only did more than two night feedings in hospital.
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My lil girl is 3 months and I'm definitely looking forward to longer stretches of sleep!! She has her days where she will, but she's still mostly waking up every 3-4 hours. Oof!
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At 3ish weeks he was sleeping for like 3-4 hour stretches I believe. Then by 2.5 months he was doing 7-5 most nights. Then we had the four-month sleep regression and he stopped doing that. Was nice while it lasted
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The 4 month regression came at 12 weeks and that was miserable for about 2 weeks, up ever 2 hours at least.. After that, he started sleeping 6 hours stretches after we first put him down. Now he sleeps about 8-9 hours from when we first put him down.
The only thing we changed was bedtime. He was going to bed at 730-8ish, now he goes to bed at 630, and sleeps until 330 or 4, and then is up for the day at 6 or 630.
He's 5.5 months old now. How old is your LO?
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Two months for DS, like 10.5 months for DD! But she was waking up because of teething and sleep regression, not from hunger.
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8 weeks for LO 1, 6 weeks for LO 2 and nothing was really consistent for LO 3 until 8ish months.
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With LO1 it was 8 weeks he started waking once a night most nights. With LO2 I think we got 4 hour stretch at 8 weeks. It was probably around 12 weeks that he started doing one longer first stretch of 5-6 hours.
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At 13 weeks he suddenly started sleeping 5-7 hour stretches. He's a hungry EBF baby so it was a relief!!
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@walshbee15: she's one month old. I'm EBF and feeding on demand...it usually works out to feeding her around 10 or 11 pm, 1 or 2 am, and again around 4 or 5 am. Basically every 3 hours or so overnight. At this point, it's what I'd expect...but looking forward to longer stretches of sleep for sure!
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That's pretty much the schedule my guy had at one month as well. Sometimes I got a good 4 hours but usually not. And he wanted to nurse every single hour during the day. haha
But he stretched out the day and night feeds over time himself. I definitely think you can look forward to some sleep in the near future!
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@walshbee15: my LO is 5 months old and on the EXACT same schedule! Asleep by 7, up at 3 or 4 to eat, then up for the day about 6.
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@walshbee15: thanks!
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@travellingbee: 7-5...sounds dreamy!
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@atoz: I know! Hopefully we'll get back to that at some point!
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I think she did 5 hrs a few times by 12 weeks but then the 4 month regression hit us hard and everything sucked until we sleep trained at around 6 months. After that, she was at 2-3 feedings per night and gradually dropped them all by 10 months.
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no nighttime feedings for us between 2-3 months. She just started sleeping longer!
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@travellingbee: haha! I am happy with his schedule for now!
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With my first she was sleeping eight hours at six weeks, eight hours at ten weeks, and 12-13 by 12 weeks.
My second slept six hours from the beginning. Hit a few bumps when my supply plummeted around five months and was back to doing 12 hours at six months.
My third was doing six around a month. STTN from two months to 4.5 months and now at five months sleeps 7:00-4:30 then until 8:00.
We've been insanely lucky.
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@oliviaoblivia: wow! Lucky for sure. You didn't have to wake him to eat?
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DD woke up once or STTN from when she 10-12 weeks old. Then she started rolling over so we swaddle weaned and the 4 month sleep regression hit so she was waking up 2-3 times a night. She just started either waking up once or STTN again at 8 months old.
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@atoz: I have all girls. They were all LGA and since their birth weights were so high our pediatrician was happy to let then sleep if they were gaining.
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@oliviaoblivia: oops, sorry! Thanks!
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We did it pretty gradually. At around 2 months, she was waking every 2.5-3 hours. But we noticed that for certain feedings, she wouldn't eat much and would go right back to sleep. Her wake times for those feedings were pretty consistent.
We did 3 things over a 6 week period that helped stretch out the feedings to the point where she was sleeping through the night.
First, we did a dream feed about 1.5 hours after putting her down (around 11 at night), so I could go to bed and not be wondering if I'd have to wake up again in 30 minutes.
Second, for those feedings when she woke consistently but didn't eat much (like, she'd wake every morning at 4am, but drink only an ounce), we did something called the "wake to sleep" method. Wake to sleep requires that you record their night wakings (time, length/amount of feed) for several days, so you can pinpoint a time they're waking, but only because of their sleep cycle and not because they're actually hungry. For our LO, we'd set an alarm at 3:40am, and at that time one of us would go to her crib and place a hand on her chest or put her pacifier in her mouth. This disrupted her sleep cycle *just enough* that she wouldn't wake up at 4, and would wake up at 5:30 instead. We did this for 4 nights, and then stopped. From then on, she completely stopped waking up at 4am and she dropped that feeding.
Third, we made sure she was drinking enough during the day to compensate for what she was missing at night, so she'd be less likely to wake hungry.
Again, it was all very gradual but we got there eventually!
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DD is 14 weeks. Around 10 weeks she did a couple 5 hour stretches but then went back to 3-4 hours. I just started giving her a bottle of formula at 10pm this week and she has done two 6 hour stretches since.
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@magnoliamama42: great advice...thanks!
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