Growth spurt or regression?
Your baby is suddenly waking more and you cannot tell whether to feed them more or hold the schedule. The two situations look similar for the first day or so and then diverge clearly.
3 min read
A growth spurt is exactly what it sounds like: a short period of accelerated growth, driving a genuine increase in appetite. It commonly appears around two and three weeks, six weeks, three months, and less predictably after that. The extra feeding is the point and the sleep disruption is a side effect.
A developmental disruption is the brain doing something new, and hunger is not part of the picture. Feeding more in response tends to produce a baby who takes the feed because it is offered and comforting, which is how a night feed that was not needed becomes a fixture.
Telling them apart
Are they feeding hungrily? A growth spurt means full, vigorous feeds, day and night, with real hunger cues. A comfort feed at 2am is short, sleepy and half-hearted.
Is the daytime appetite up too? Growth spurts affect the whole twenty-four hours. A purely nocturnal change is unlikely to be hunger.
How long has it lasted? Growth spurts run two to five days. Developmental disruption runs two to six weeks.
Is there a new skill? Rolling, sitting, crawling, standing, first words. If you can name it, feeding is not the answer.
Nappies and weight. A genuinely underfed baby has fewer wet nappies and comes off their growth line. This is the check that settles it.
What to do in each case
For a growth spurt: feed. More often, day and night, for as long as it lasts. Milk supply responds to demand, so extra feeding is doing work beyond that single feed. Do not attempt schedule changes during it; it will be over in under a week.
For a developmental disruption: hold the schedule, support the new skill during the day, offer comfort without introducing a new sleep condition, and wait it out. If you do feed at night - and there is nothing wrong with that - be aware you may need to unpick it afterwards.
Hungry babies feed hungrily. If the 2am feed is three sleepy minutes, it isn’t about food.
The overlap
They can happen at once, particularly around three to four months. When you genuinely cannot tell, feed - the cost of an unnecessary feed for a few nights is much lower than the cost of an underfed baby - and reassess after five days. If it is still going, it was not a growth spurt.
The trap in the middle
The expensive mistake is feeding through a developmental phase because it looks like hunger for the first two nights. Five nights later, the phase is still running and a night feed has been reinstated that your baby did not need, and now has to be removed again.
The way out is a time limit set in advance. Feed for four or five nights, then look at what has happened. If it was a growth spurt, it is over and the feeds fall away on their own. If it is still going, it was not hunger, and the sooner you stop the less there is to unpick. Deciding that limit while you can still think is the whole trick.
When it is neither
A third possibility gets overlooked because it is less interesting than the other two: the schedule has stopped fitting. Wake windows lengthen continuously, and a bedtime that was right a month ago can be twenty minutes wrong now, which is enough to fragment a night.
It is worth checking before either of the other explanations, because it costs three days of notes and it is the most common cause of a fortnight that looks developmental. If the windows are right and the feeding pattern says it is not hunger, then you are looking at a leap and the answer is to wait it out.
When to stop troubleshooting
Poor weight gain, fewer wet nappies than usual, feeding refusal, painful feeding, or a baby who seems unwell rather than hungry or busy, all mean speaking to your health visitor or GP promptly rather than adjusting anything.
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