"LoopyNZ" wrote in message
...
Hi there,

DS (3.5 months, healthy weight gain) has been sleeping technically through
the night (5-6 hours) for a while now. (I'm not sure why I wake up to feed
him - I have no alarm, and he doesn't seem to be awake, but perhaps he
just snuffles enough to wake me up.)

Last night he slept for 8 hours, and while that's a nice occasional treat
for me, I'm inclined to think it's probably a bit long for such young baby
and my breasts to go without a feed on a regular basis. Thoughts?

I'm also wondering if anyone knows off the top of their head any web
references advising on general rules of thumb for how long you should let
babies sleep through the night (at different weights or ages)?

Kelly Mom, Ask Dr Sears, and LLL seem to be fairly generalised rather than
specific, i.e. saying it's normal for some babies to not sleep through the
night, and they may need to wake during the night to feed.

I'd like to know for future reference, because the answer for a
3-month-old will likely be different from the answer for a 1-year-old.

..oo00OO Loopy OO00oo..

PS Sorry for such a long mail, just trying to anticipate all the questions
that will come back at me! LOL

From my personal experience...
DS slept 3 hours during the day, 4 hours at night when he was born. I
exclusively bf him with no problems. You could almost set a clock to his
sleeping/feeding schedule. The first night he actually slept all night long
was July 1 - he was born Jan 31, so he was 5 months old.
DD, though, OTOH, was completely opposite. The first day we came home from
the hospital, she slept a good 6-7 hours through the night. I figured I got
lucky that first night since she was up ALL night in the hospital. I
figured she could have been hit hard with life and just real tired. Next
day and next day and every day after, she continued to sleep 6-7 hours at
least at night until she was about 6 weeks old, I think... She then slept
through the night even more - about 7-8 hours at this point. By 3 months,
she was sleeping a good 10 hours at night, and ever since about 5ish months,
she's been sleeping at least 12 hours through the night.
At first, I really thought I was in heaven with her - come on... A baby that
practically sleeps all night long since day 1 isn't something you *always*
hear about. Mind you, with her, I had nothing but problems with nursing. At
around 3 months, I think, she started to lose weight rather than her
regular, great gaining. She started to refuse to nurse around 4ish months,
I think, and from about 3 months on, she'd get one real good feeding before
bed - maybe around 10pm, sleep, and get one good feeding in the morning -
about 8am. The days were hell for me, as she was cranky, which I do think
was from being hungry. She'd suck a few times, pull away, cry, try and suck
more and she really didn't seem to be getting much to eat.
I tried almost everything - I tried to pump with a manual pump, expressing
on my own, heck, we even rented one of those big, fancy electric Medela
(Symphony, I believe it was?) pumps that cost an arm and a leg for a deposit
and rental fees, but I had heard they're top of the line and the best of the
best. No dice. I had suggested to me (might have even been on here?) to
only offer her to nurse. I was unable to pump anything more than half an
ounce or so at a time, which led to me being tired, sore and frustrated, and
didn't help DD one bit, so that knocked off the idea of expressing to bottle
feed. I went with the suggestion of only offering her a breast, but it
didn't seem to work. She'd get frustrated and angry, and I found that
during the day, I was attempting to feed her for 5 minutes at a time - she'd
get downright angry even pushing for that long - and it was like every 15
minutes during the day. That just wasn't possible with other children to
tend to, as well as my own sanity and mind to keep in check.
I do think I ended up with supply issues, maybe even because of her long
stretches of sleeping at night. My mom had always told me to let the baby
sleep - no average, healthy baby will sleep himself or herself to death by
starvation. Babies will wake up when they're hungry. I had no problems
like this with DS. I exclusively nursed and I also pumped - by the time he
was a month old, I had about 40 8-oz bottles stashed away in the freezer. I
had enough milk for an army... Not at all the case with DD...

I'm sure this doesn't happen all the time, but... That's our story, and I
thought I'd throw it out there just in case. MIGHT be something to possibly
look into, but who knows. DD took VERY well to a bottle. No issues at all,
and as soon as she was on a bottle, her weight went right back up and has
been great for gain ever since. But, until then, she had lost a fair amount
of weight - enough for me to have little red flags go up - and enough that I
had basically tried EVERYTHING I could think of or was suggested to me.