[Nugget0612]

I was reading the thread "how's night time going" and noticed how many babies are already sleeping in 7-12 hour stretches. For those babies that do that...do you guys wait to your baby is crying to feed him/her? Annabella (who was born on jan 19) is sleeping in 3-4 hour intervals. She has slept 5 hr intervals a couple times but that's been the longest. Like tonight it's been 11pm 3am and 6am. But I never let her get to point she is crying...I usually just get up and make bottle when I hear her grunting for about 5 mins (this only occurs when it's close for her to eat) but there has been a few times recently she has grunted several mins and I didn't get up cuz I was that tired ( :/ ) and she drifted back off to sleep without ever crying and slept another 45 mins- 1 hr. so now I'm wondering if i should wait till she just cries and maybe she will start to sleep longer? Just wanted to see what you guys did...thanks!

[MammaWannaBe]

For the first few weeks of her life we didn't let her go longer than 5 hours at night and she normally wouldn't go longer than 4 hours without her bottle at night. But then the stretches got longer as we upped her formula and we don't wake her unless she cries for her bottle. Because sometimes she lets out a sigh or a cry in her sleep that's unrelated to eating. Our ped is fine with it and even said that a lot of babies start sleeping longer once they hit around 11lbs / as the formula amount goes up.

You're not a bad mom for sneaking in some extra Z's! Do what makes you comfortable but personally I don't think you have to wake her for a bottle overnight as long as she's eating well during the day.

[mommysc2]

I def wait until Sophia cries before I get up a make a bottle. During the day though I do wake her if she sleeps more than 3.5 hours but not at night. I agree, as long as she is eating well during the day and gaining the proper weight I wouldn't wake her unless she really starts to cry.

[mal91011]

I usually wait till max means business because hes such a noisy sleeper. if I think he'll be waking soon I'll go prep his bottle so theres no meltdown, but I'll let him sleep.

[Jules_loves_beaches]

I wait unti eyes are completely open to grab Ember, but she isn't really a noisy sleeper just occasionally makes some noise.

[swaddlestar]

I'm with the other moms...I don't get the bottle going until he is calling out. He doesn't scream for it so insistently like he did when he was a few weeks old- I guess I've learned his "hungry" call.

The other reason I think he sleeps so long is because he's in his crib in his room across the hall. If he slept in our room I'd be awake every time he stirred. When we went out of town the other week & my MIL took him overnight and he slept in the pack & play in her room, she said he made lots of noise and wiggled around during the night. But he always calmed down and went back to sleep. So I think this is also the reason why we all sleep good- I don't hear every little grunt and wake up.

[SaraSmiles]

Joshua usually sleeps from about 8pm-ish to about 3amish usually. Sometimes he stirs a bit in between and I just slip him his binky and he goes right back to sleep. If hes not crying I know hes not starving, so Im not too worried about it.

[d_tops]

J goes to bed between 8:30 and 10:30, and then will often sleep until 4 or 5am. Sometimes he wakes up at 2 or 3, but I've found that rocking him a little, or sometimes changing him will do the trick and he doesn't actually need a bottle. I don't go to him if he's just stirring, in general (during the day and at night) I will let him fuss a little if he's down so that I can figure out if it's a real need or just a little upset, and give him a chance to self-soothe.

We got him to sleep longer at night without needing a change or feeding by: keeping him up longer during the day (60 to 90 minutes between feedings), taking him out during the day to get some fresh air (unless it's bitter cold), feeding him more frequently during the day (so same amount in a 24 hour period, just condensed), cluster feeding as bed time approaches, and maintaining a fairly steady bedtime routine. We kind of started all of these things at once, so I can't tell you which, or if any, got him to sleep through much of the night. It's my understanding that some babies just do, and some babies just don't... which is not terribly reassuring.

[kbpeanut]

Bax doesn't sleep through the night yet, but I still don't wake him to eat. He'll usually wake himself when he's hungry, about every 4 hours, sometimes 3 and sometimes 5. But this morning, for example, he woke a bit early for his feeding, so DH just cuddled him and he fell back asleep.