Advice pls-12wk old sleeping and general routine

Hi Max, i suggest also put him down earlier- he might take a few days but it will make such a difference to your life and his... my son started sleeping through at 10 weeks but that was of his own accord- up until that point if he woke i fed him and then on his 10 week birthday he slept through.. i found starting a bed time routine early helped him sleep longer- as sometimes babies can be over tired- hence the waking... i would rather it take a while to put him to sleep at 6/7pm then 11pm which is what was happening to us before we started a routine.. good luck :) i started with the bedtime routine first then progressed to daytime routine over time.

My baby is 16 weeks old and I started home made semi-solid feed mixed wth BM or formula for night time feeds...this is giving me 5hrs of uninterrupted sleep and thank GOD for that I can be human at work and not a zombie! It's extremely debatable topic whether to introduce solids early but I beleive each baby is different and their needs are different. I had c-section and struggled with milk supply for my boys demand so top fed from hospital itself. I take fenugreek seed pills (solgar) which have got me breastfeeding till now....along with oats as part of daily intake and loads of fluids. For semi solid food I make a batch and freeze for use for a week: 1 tbsp basmati rice, half tbsp yellow lentil, 1 glass of water and 1 red juicy peeled apple or pear. I blend it and freeze this puree' as cubes . for evening feed after bath I use 2 cubes of this solid along with 2oz of bm or formula. Baby guzzles this up , sometimes as dreamfeed sumtimes awake and then he snoozes for 4.5 to 5 hrs straight! Am planning to introduce tinned solid food after 6 months though....

Its true - you never seem to get used to the lack of sleep. We all understand how desperate those first 3 months are.... I knew the solids at 4 mo thing would stir up the forum - just something that worked for me. I have three children born within 5 years - all exclusively on breast milk for the first 4 months. My first slept through the night (at least 7 hours continuously, every night) at 7 weeks, my second at 9 weeks and my third (and largest child) at 12 weeks. None of them used dummies, no allergies or asthma, all perfect health so far. Knock on wood, whatever I did worked for them. The other trick I used was to stretch out the time between feedings as long as I could. I didn't feed at the first cry instead I would switch rooms and/or activities. You'd be surprised how many times the baby is just bored. If you stretch out the feedings, the baby a) is more tired and b) will take more milk at a time. This will start to become a virtuous cycle of larger, faster feedings leading to longer sleep periods. This is still baby-led, by the way.

Try and take a nap every day, ([b'>Daza will no doubt commiserate with me on how impossible this is once you have two children[/b'>) don't get out of bed until your husband leaves for work in the morning and go to bed as early as possible in the evening. Daytime sleep? Is that what you get when you close your eyes for 3 seconds when cooking dinner? :D

I strongly believe in being baby-led, and not forcing a feeding routine, especially when breastfeeding as it can really negatively impact supply. That said, from around 12 weeks babies sleep begins (slowly) to shift from being based on how long they have been awake (watching for tired signs and putting them down for a sleep as soon as you see them) to a more regular pattern, so you can start working on developing set nap times if that's they way you'd like to go. I always breastfed on demand but did introduce a nap schedule from around the 4 month mark. The first nap is usually the first to develop so maybe start with a fixed nap (say at 9am if your baby wakes at 7am)and introduce a set bedtime and base the in between in your babies cues with the long term goal being two or three set naptimes and a set wake up and bedtime. As far as the other advice the only things I would caution are that adding any formula feeds will probably result in you making less breastmilk, which is fine if you are ok with a gradual shift to full formula feeding but something to be aware of if that isn't the plan, and you may start to find from about this point that your baby develops a preference for being bottle fed which can make them refuse to breastfeed. I would think if bottle feeds only ever come from your husband it might help avoid this. As far as introducing babyrice at 4 months (or ever tbh) something to be aware of is that the ONLY nutrients in babyrice are the added vitamins. Without any exaggeration babyrice is rice that has been reduced to pure starch with synthetic vitamins and iron added. If you mixed babyrice into a bottle of breastmilk, the breastmilk would convert the rice to sugar, it would literally be the equivalent of adding a multivitamin drop and a few teaspoons of sugar to the bottle. Studies have found that babies given solids earlier than 6 months tend to simply reduce the amount of milk they drink and so you risk your baby taking the same amount of calories but of less nutritious food (breastmilk is very high in fat and fat soluble vitamins which are really important for a growing brain and are not found in most early weaning foods. Not all babies are physically or emotionally ready to sleep through the night at 12 weeks, many are not ready by 6 or even 9 months, its important to know that. Its also true though that from around 4 months its common for babies to start waking for sleep props like dummies or rocking or feeding to sleep so you can work to break those associations if possible to expedite the road to sleeping through. I am very much not a CIO mama but I found the no-cry sleep solution a good book that fits within my own parenting ethic and still has a strong focus on giving your baby a voice. My top tip for increasing milk supply (apart from feeding frequently) is sleep! Try and take a nap every day, (Daza will no doubt commiserate with me on how impossible this is once you have two children) don't get out of bed until your husband leaves for work in the morning and go to bed as early as possible in the evening. I would also try and bring bedtime much much earlier as soon as you can.

It's a tough time of year for the little ones with the heat and the aircon. It might not just be hunger that your little chap is waking for, he might well be thirsty too. My EBF baby is coming up 4 1/2 months and he is waking every couple of hours at night to feed, it's increased to this since our aircon has had to be on all night. It can also be hard keeping up your milk supply in the heat, I definitely have to work harder at having enough when the weather is hot. If you are struggling and happy to give formula then maybe you could try supplementing with another bottle to see if that helps? Personally, I wouldn't start solids at 4 months but that's just my preference. I'm taking the tough it out approach and sticking with EBF but it's a lot easier for me to do because he's not my first baby and I know that it doesn't last forever. It might feel like it does at the time but it truly doesn't! The most important thing for your baby is that he has a happy mummy so if you need to give yourself a break with more formula, do it. Happy mummy = happy baby. It's what I did with with my first baby as I felt like I wasn't coping. I seem to be able to get by on much less sleep now :) Good luck, no matter what you decide to do you will one day get to sleep through the night again, I promise.

Max! Where do you get fennel tea from? My lil man is 2 months old and wakes up every 3 hours to feed. We give him formula before bedtime then I breastfeed during the night whenever he is hungry! I give him a high calorie formula 1-3 times per day as he was born tiny and my milk supply still isn't great! I hope to read some good suggestions from other mummies here!

I know the recommendations vary but I would start him on solids as soon as he turns 4 months old. If he is hungry (and it sounds like he is waking up because of it) then the only way to get him to sleep longer is to load him up during the day. A little rice cereal in EBM will help him get the calories and nutrition he needs ... I would feed it in the morning to start so that any stomach issues will work themselves out during the afternoon. I would also ramp up the tummy time to physically make him tired toward the end of the day. But he sounds like he is in a growth spurt and you might just have to tough it out.... Drink lots of water and eat well so your supply stays strong in this heat. Good luck!