Sleep Training

I was on the board a lot when DD was little, and now I'm back with another tough sleeper!

DS started out a good sleeper, but for the last two months his sleep at night has been getting worse.  He is now 4.5 months.  He goes down between 6:30-6:45 pm (usually is put to bed awake and goes to sleep on his own with minimal fussing), but then he wakes a lot to eat - last night it was 10:45, 12:45, 3, 4:45.  I know he doesn't need to eat THAT often at night, but I think he does need to eat at least once or twice.  He eats a lot at his first waking, and then the remaining wakings he eats a bit but not as much.  He will ONLY go back to sleep if he is nursed - if DH rocks him, he either screams, or goes back to sleep for like 20 mins before waking to eat.  So I know these wakings are mainly habit to nurse back to sleep, combined with bit of real hunger.  I would be okay with him waking every 4 hours or so, but every 2 hours is too much for me to take!  I have been sick for the last week and a half and I can't get better when I barely sleep at night.

So my question is, how do I deal with CIO when sometimes he will need to be fed and sometimes he will have to go back to sleep on his own?  Will it just confuse him to get fed sometimes and not others?  I've tried doing the feed-less-at-each-feeding approach, but then he just wakes even sooner to eat.  Any advice on how to handle night feedings with CIO would be appreciated!! TIA

Hey there,

I see nobody replied to you yet - sorry! When we had this problem, I decided that in the middle of the night I wouldn't be able to stick with checking until it's been X number of hours, and feeding other times. So here's what we did, and it worked fairly well:

Step one - no feeds before midnight. It is most natural for a baby to sleep the longest/deepest stretch in those first 5-6 hours, so use that to your advantage. When DS cried before midnight, I would go in, tell him night night, shh, offer him his soother, tuck his soft blankie by his face and leave the room. I didn't go back until he'd fallen asleep and woken a second time. After midnight, I would just feed, lay back down and walk away. At this point he was sometimes fighting going back to sleep even after a feed, but I stuck to my guns.

Once he was consistently sleeping until midnight or later, I decided no feeds before 3am. Same technique, except I would offer him a sip of water from a bottle, stick his soother in and say night night. I didn't go back until he'd fallen asleep.

Next step was no feeds before 5am, and finally no feeds!

This took quite some time, but we got better sleep all around and he went back to sleep easier after feeding once we started this training. Some people are lucky and once the baby is trained thru that first feeding, they just sleep all night. I didn't have that luck, but trust me, if you can go to bed at 9pm, and know you won't get up before 3am, it feels much, much better. I did enlist my hubbies helps, since I would pump before bed, he did the 12am feeding. That was awesome!