5 month old waking at night

amother

OP ↓

Tue, Dec 10 2024, 1:08 am

My 5 month old is waking to eat every two hours at night. She is growing very well . She is not being the best eater during the day but she eats very frequently to make up for it. How do I stop these night feedings? Or should I just still be feeding her so often at night? When I try to put her back to sleep without feeding her ( ie shushing, patting), she gets hysterical.

amother

Catmint

Tue, Dec 10 2024, 3:20 am

Interesting, sometimes they go through growth spurts where they eat a lot for a while and then settle down periodically that happens....aside from that, for your child to sleep more in the evening you would want to make sure that during the day your child doesn't sleep more than two hours. Make sure to wake up the child, do that consistently and then see what effect that has on the evening sleep as the child gets used to that. At 10 months you can start to sleep train ie. soothe a child for 1 minute, leave and then repeatedly come back and rinse and repeat because that teaches the child to self soothe themselves. As they get older you can hold their hand and walk with them to their room and do the same, however many times it takes in a night..... also since your child is five months your child can start with your pediatrician's advice etc.....eating some food during the day. I assume your child is breast fed? The eating is more frequent without the bottle perhaps when breastfed? I found that one of my kids was an every 3 hour child and the other one was an every 2 hour child so those rythms are natural, aside from my advise, the abishter is taking care of your child, doing the rest and to just trust it.

amother

Eggshell

Tue, Dec 10 2024, 4:50 am

It’s not just your baby. My 5 month old eats very well during the day and night but she has this internal clock for feeding times. Every 3ish hours, night and day.
Thank G-d as soon as she eats she goes back to sleep so it’s not so horrible waking up at night to feed her.
I joke that she hasn’t read the baby manual that says at this age she can go longer in between feedings at night time….

amother

Currant

Tue, Dec 10 2024, 7:17 am

Get the book gentle baby sleep guide by Kim west
She teaches you how to make sure your child is getting the longer stretch of sleep at the beginning of the night, which they should be getting at this age. Its still normal for them to eat once or twice at night but you should be seeing a solid stretch of sleep in the beginning
It’s a very gentle approach and I use it for my baby with great results.

amother

Oak

Tue, Dec 10 2024, 8:43 am

This is normal for 5 months old. I'm not sure where everyone gets the idea that baby gets sleep trained at 3 months or 5 months or whatever. Most babies get up at night until older and then it fizzles out. My baby is 9 months old and he gets up usually to eat and then he sleeps with me the rest of the night. He eats on and off.

amother

DarkRed

Tue, Dec 10 2024, 10:01 am

He's a baby & doing what he should be doing. You claim that he's hungry, so please feed him & don't deny him food.
You can try supplementing with formula the last feed before bed, it may help him sleep longer.

amother

↑ OP

Yesterday at 10:38 pm

amother DarkRed wrote:

She eats a tiny bit and goes back to sleep so I am not sure how hungry she is! I don’t want her to cry and I feed her every time but I wanted to know if there is any way I can help her sleep for longer stretches and eat more when she wakes up…