So my child is killing me! More specifically she's getting us out of bed twice a night. It seems that brea*stmilk is only holding her 5 or 6 hours max. She'll sleep that long once, and then its 3-4 hour stretches after that. This makes it rather difficult when you've got to be at work at 7 am.
I've thought about just letting her cry at night, but I think she's really just hungry. She always goes right back to sleep after eating. So I've had it suggested to me that I put a little rice cereal in her bottle. She turns 4 months old in a little over a week and I'm seriously contemplating this. Do I need to buy another nip*ple for the bottle we have or can I just make the hole a little bigger? Should I try this out during the day for fear that a tablespoon of rice cereal in her last bottle of the day would keep her up all night? Please share any lessons you've learned with me so that I can give this a whirl. I need to get some more sleep!
Groggliy yours =),
Lauren
3 comments:
here's a good article for you. http://www.drgreene.org/body.cfm?id=21&action=detail&ref=561
my personal opinion is NO. research it. this is just one article for you which looks at the rice from both angles. however if you research online what doctors suggest,they do not want babies having it in their bottle. it's too dangerous. just do your research and don't rely on opinions only.
Okay - so we've been exactly where you are and we did give our little ones rice cereal in their bottle (the doctor actually told us to do it to help their acid reflux) and there are special sized nipples you can buy (Dr. Brown's I think #3 for thick liquids).
BUT - sorry the bad news is that it made absolutely no difference at all. We thought the first week it was helping - but then they started to refuse bottles with rice cereal added and they sleep exactly the same amount with or without the cereal.
The good news is you are right on the edge of the time that babies start to consolidate their sleep (sleep longer - less often). Hang in there! You could always try formula at night and have Kevin do that feeding and you breastfeed the other feeding.
I really thought food would make a difference in sleep, but it really doesn't (from my experience.) One thing that did make a different was putting our girls to bed earlier. The sleep book we use says to try inching up the baby's bedtime if they are continuing to do night waking. Our girls go to bed around 6 or 7 every night and have slept much better and longer since we started it months ago.
Hope that helps!
It's been a couple weeks. How's it going with her sleeping? I hope it's going better. I have no advice though. :( Elijah never had anything besides mommy milk until he was almost 7 months old but I hope what you have been trying is helping. Let us know!
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