Sleep Problems And Nighttime Feedings

Sleep Problems And Nighttime Feedings

Although your baby may hand over regular nighttime feedings on his own by the time he’s three months old, don't expect – or insist – that such a young infant give them up 

altogether, all of a sudden.

But if your child is a minimum of three months old, still nurses or requires a bottle at bedtime, and wishes to eat again several more times during the night, then the additional feedings could be causing the additional wakings. If that's the case, you'll be ready to help him sleep better by decreasing the amount of those feedings.

However, if your baby takes during a substantial amount of food – from extended feedings at the breast, or bottles adding up to quite eight ounces over the course of the night – then he has learned that certain times of night are mealtimes. To eliminate these feedings suddenly wouldn’t be wise or nice.

The amount of milk or juice your child drinks during the night could also be considerable. If he finishes four full eight-ounce bottles, that's an outsized amount for even an adult to consume overnight.

Solving the matter 

If you've got concluded that excessive and unnecessary feedings in the dark are disrupting your child’s sleep, you'll be relieved to find out that although such feedings can cause severe sleep disturbances, the matter is additionally one among the simplest to repair .

Two things got to be addressed. the primary is to scale back or eliminate the nighttime feedings to avoid their various sleep-disrupting effects. The second is to show your child new sleep associations in order that he can nod off without being held, without eating, and without sucking on the breast or bottle. you'll do this stuff at an equivalent time, or one at a time.

To fix the issues caused by the feedings, start by gradually decreasing the amount of nighttime feedings, their size, or both. Just don’t stop the feedings suddenly. A program designed to permit new patterns to develop are going to be easier for him to follow.

Your goal is to gradually move your child’s feelings of hunger out of the nighttime and into the daytime. Once there's only one remaining nighttime feeding left, you'll prefer to stop that feeding directly – rather than gradually – if you favor , since the entire amount of ingested food during the night is now fairly small.

If you're performing on sleep associations and hunger patterns simultaneously, put your child in bed as soon as each feeding is over, albeit he wakes and begins to cry. If you nurse him and he sleeps next to you, move him off of you when the feeding is completed in order that he can learn to nod off without using your breast as a pacifier. You’ve just fed him, so he's not hungry – now you're only changing his expectation of what happens while he falls asleep.

Within every week , if all goes well, you'll have finished lowering or maybe eliminating the nighttime feedings. then , continue applying the technique of progressive waiting at any waking in the dark (except for feeding times) until the wakings stop. It shouldn't take quite another few days

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