night feeding a sleepy baby

[siany]

Hi,
DD is nearly six weeks old and is BFeeding, she has an occasional bottle of EBM. She feeds well, and is gaining weight. Atpresent she usually wakes 11pm, 3am and 6am for a feed. I always allow her to wake on her own for her feeds. However, at night she often starts to feed and then falls asleep. It is then really difficult to encourage her to have a full feed.
I will change her to encourage her to feed more. If she does not have a good feed at these times she will only sleep for two hours and will wake at 1am 3am 5am. How can I encourage her to have a full feed at 11pm and 3am? Also in the last week she has started to "fuss" a lot when feeding, pulling of the boob and crying before settling back to feeding. This can go on for a while and make the feed very long. Any advice on why this might be?

Thanks for your help.

 

[keli]

The fussing might be that she needs winding i find Cooper fusses and if i wind him he settles back into feeding alot better. Altho sometimes he's just being fussy! Not too sure about getting her to take full feeds i always just let Coop have as much as he wanted. Think at this early you'll just have to ride it out. It will get better

 

[andreag]

I always changed LO mid way through a night feed to wake her up again, and jiggled my boob in her mouth a bit if i didn't think she had taken much. Not sure about the fussing - they do tend to go through a growth spurt at 6 weeks so it might be that she isn't getting it as quickly as she wants.
We introduced an EBM dreamfeed at about 10 weeks when we went to bed. Although its impossible to tell, I thought she took more from the bottle than she did from me as it is easier, and she stopped waking for the 1am and 4am feeds. I thik this time around I might try this a little earlier.

 

[Charlie:-)]

Sounds exactly like what my LO was like at 6 weeks old!

Some nights she would feed pretty well during the night and again some nights she wouldnt and I'd be up more often, sometimes she woudl feed as good as gold and sometimes she would pull off crying and then settle back on the boob (in fact she's been like this just this aft, but then again she's been grumpy today after jabs yesterday). As someone said earier try winding when she pulls off. She may even be going through a growth spurt so needs milk more often. We also give a bottle of EBM before we go to bed because she seems to take more from the bottle than from me and she definitely sleeps longer.

It will pass and hopefully she will settle back to her usual feeding pattern.