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Old October 27th 06, 02:12 PM posted to misc.kids.breastfeeding
KD
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Posts: 34
Default am I doing something wrong?


determined wrote:
Emily is now nearly 11 months old. She eats like a champ all day, likes
everything we give her. She's still small for her age, but we don't really
even think about that anymore, since she is growing well.

Here's the problem. For about a month now, she is waking up as often as she
did as a newborn. She is eating around 18 ounces during the night. This is
in addition to the 20 or so ounces she is drinking during the day, plus all
the foods she is eating. I am exhausted! Is this a growth spurt, or what?
She also cut her first tooth about a week ago, so I wondered if that has
something to do with the frequent waking at night.

And at one point her sleeping routine was like clockwork - she fell asleep
at 8pm, had her normal wakings about every 3 hrs, sometimes every 4 hrs, and
got up at around 7am. Then she would nap from about 11am to 1pm every day.
Now, She may fall asleep at 8pm, or maybe not until 9pm. Then she might
only sleep for an hour, then she wakes and wants to play. Or she absolutely
can't stand being in her crib alone (it's at the foot of our bed), so we put
her in bed with us. She rests much better, but still wakes frequently
through the night.

The pediatrician said basically that it is our fault - that we have
reinforced her waking up at night by feeding her... I felt like she was
hungry and I didn't want to withhold food. But at this point we are so
deliriously tired, I don't know what to do.

Any ideas?
Betsy


Wow, I wish I had a solution for this. But all I can offer is the
knowledge that you're not alone. We're currently going through the
exact same thing with our son who's not quite seven months old.

He was sleeping great, about ten hours straight generally, since he was
about two months old. Then he started waking a couple times a night,
this started a couple of months ago. In the last month we started
solids, and now he's often up every two or three hours. He's worse than
he was when he was six weeks old!

Our boy has been in his own room since he was three months old, and
like you, when he wakes, I feed him. Mistake? I don't know. What I do
know is that if I don't nurse him, the little whimpers and cries evolve
into screams and sobs if he doesn't get the breast. I've tried the
pacifier, talking to him, rocking him, stroking his head, but the only
thing that works is the breast. In my tired state, I'm not up for any
more experimentation so the breast is what he gets.

In the daytime he's his happy, normal self. In the night he turns into
this monster baby who seems determined to wake me as soon as he senses
I'm starting to fall asleep! I thought of teeth too, but he's had teeth
since he was three months old. He has eight of them now, and no new
ones have come through in the past two months. So I don't know what the
heck it is, I can only hope it's temporary.

Hang in there...hopefully this will all be over soon?

KD & G