Thursday, July 16, 2009

It must be done

This morning I decided Cameron will start sleeping through the night. Whether she agrees or not will be determined. Here's the thing. I don't mind getting up for a middle of the night feeding. But what it has become is more of an early morning feeding. 3:30 or 4 AM. I feed her, she goes back to sleep and I wake her up around 6:45 for another feeding before I leave. The problem? She doesn't really eat at that second feeding. She eats off one side for about 8 minutes and then usually spits up 1/2 of it. Then what happens is she wants her bottle at daycare earlier than normal and it cascades throughout the day.

I wouldn't even mind that if not for the fact that it requires me to pump immediately after arriving at work. That means my work day starts a bit later and I end up pumping 4 times at work. Yes, 4 freaking times! I am trying to cut back but there are those pesky supply issues I'm worried about. I've actually starting pumping just about what I need so I would hate to see that stop.

So here's my game plan: pacify her until 6 AM. Yup, that's it. The sum total of my awesome strategy. It will involve a lot of getting up by me and DH but I'm hoping after a few nights she will start sleeping on her own until 6 AM. It starts our morning juggle a bit earlier too but we can handle that. After all, it's not like we'll get much sleep with the "pacify her until 6 AM" plan. Am I crazy? Has anyone else dealt with this and have advice you can share with me? Or how about just good thoughts?

Cameron's last feeding is 4 ounces at around 6:30 PM if anyone is curious. We still keep her tightly swaddled throughout the night. Her stomach used to grumble while I was feeding her in the middle of the night but that hasn't happened for a couple of weeks so I don't think she's starving when she wakes up, if that makes sense.

6 comments:

Nicole S. said...

Do you have to pacify her? Or could you just do total CIO? I did the pacifier thing and it was a disaster. One night, I got up about 13 times to give the paci. The next night, I did complete CIO (my twins were almost 6 months but Cameron is almost 4 months and full term so I'm sure its fine) and it was awesome. 4 nights later, they were both sleeping through the night, 11.5-12 hours. However, their last bottle was 6-7 oz. But they only eat 4 times a day so if Cameron eats more frequently she may not need that much at night.

Stacey said...

Cameron does 7 feedings but one of those is middle of the night so she would be down to 6. I have always thought of CIO as something to be done in the middle of the night or at the beginning - not so close to the actual wake up time. That's good food for thought.

Mommy, Esq. said...

You may have to feed her at 5:30 am - but you wouldn't give her another "feeding" until daycare time and then she'll slowly push the 5:30 am one. [And she'd go back to bed and Jeremy can get her ready for daycare and drop her off]. She's still young enough you should be feeding her when she's hungry and not trying to schedule her. You can't really "schedule" a baby when she is breastfed - you breastfeed on demand and do bottles at daycare when she needs them. Routine is important but time on the clock a little less so. The only reason we could "schedule" my kids is bcause they always got bottles (even if at first they were BF) - same for Nicole at Sotorrific Twins, she pumped and did bottles only.

Donna said...

You could try the dream feed - I did this with DS2 and loved it, but in the end we had to break him of the habit too! Essentially, right before you are ready to lay down and sleep, you go and nurse her. Just pick her up and put her to your breast. She'll nurse automatically, even if just for a bit the first few times. Then off to bed. This helped us out a little bit, but DS2 was always a one side nurser when he was young so I still had to get up and nurse again around 2-3 am.

Anonymous said...

She needs to get her last feeding at 10 pm, maybe with a little cereal thrown in. . .never have heard of a baby Cameron's age sleeping 12 hours. . .give her a break, feed her just before you go to bed. . .:>). .Mimi

Danielle said...

Check with your ped, but, like some of the other commenters, I think she's a bit too young to be expected to sleep that long. She's probably actually starving. Remember that breastmilk is digested fairly quickly so that's leaving her with an empty tummy for quite a long time.

Good luck on getting more sleep though. You seem to have been really lucky on that front so far. I was up nursing Brady during the night until a year.