Confused about night time feeding

[Aisha2705]

Hello,
My 9 week old is in a fairly good routine on 4-hourly feeds, roughly 7.30am, 11.30am, 3.30pm, 7.30pm. He goes to bed fairly easily but then I find myself waking him for a feed at 11.30pm (dream feed) and 3.30am. It means that he sticks to the daytime E timings but I know that if I were to let him he would happily sleep for 5 plus hours (he used to do this before I established the EASY routine).

My question is, if I let him sleep and he woke at say 4.30am or 5am for a feed, should I try and feed him again at 7.30am? Do I just let him eat what he can and then wait until 11.30 for his next feed? I'm worried that he might eat nothing at 7.30am and then be hungry soon after which would then disrupt the 4-hour timings.

Am I overthinking this? Should I just go with the flow at night or keep waking him?
Any advice very welcome, I can't seem to get my head around it!
Aisha

[Lindsay27]

I have personally never woken either of my LOs at night for a feed, I just let them sleep and wake when they are hungry.  I would say however that it may be a tough early to be going 4hrs between feeds during the day, so you may find that feedings are more like every 3-3.5hrs.

My question is, if I let him sleep and he woke at say 4.30am or 5am for a feed, should I try and feed him again at 7.30am? Do I just let him eat what he can and then wait until 11.30 for his next feed?

I would feed at 4:30/5 and then feed again at 7:30am, but yes you may need to move the next feed forward a bit.  If he ate at 4:30 and then 7:30 that is 3hrs between, which is still really normal at this age so you might find he still takes a good feed at 7:30.

[Aisha2705]

Ah, thank you for your reply! So essentially, I need to be a bit more flexible at this stage? I was trying to always start and end the day at the same time - partly so that his dad has some guaranteed cuddles after he gets back from work..!

Also, I agree with you about the 4-hourly feeds but he did this himself a couple of weeks ago- and he just doesn't feed if he's not hungry. Do you think I should try and make it more like 3.5 hours? He drinks about 6oz of comfort milk every feed - usually for one feed a day he'll only take 3-4oz but otherwise at least 5oz. If I did 3.5 hourly it doesn't really add another feed during the day and so he would probably still wake the same ish times. I'll have a look at some of the suggested timings. Thank you.

Anyone else do things in a different way?

[Lindsay27]

If he moved to 4hr feeds naturally and you are both comfortable with that no need to change anything.  If dint don't wake for feeds at night is could change WU times but I think essentially the end of the day will pretty much be the same.