9 month old won't sleep without milk

[TiredMum1234]

I am after some advice please. My 9 month old DD has never slept through however she is now eating 3 meals a day plus snacks and I offer her a bottle in the day as well. She has a full bottle before bed but she is waking 2 times a night and will not go back to sleep without drinking milk - she basically drinks her entire milk allowance in the night! She also wakes early in the morning (anything from 4am) and won't go back to sleep but doesn't want any more milk or breakfast until gone 8am or 9am as she's had so much in the night!

I was breastfeeding until she was 6 months so got woken up frequently and then got her onto formula. I expected I would have to get up in the night to give her a bottle however now she is eating well I am worried she is in the habit of waking and needing the milk to go back to sleep.

She has a good routine, can self soothe as whenever she is put down for a nap in the day or to go to sleep at night I just put her in the cot and she goes to sleep fine but she will wake in the night (never at the same time so no pattern to it) and then refuse to go back to sleep until she has had milk. Once she has had the milk she then also won't go back to sleep for ages, sometimes has to be rocked, which again makes no sense as she isn't rocked any other time.

I have an older DD too who was exactly the same and I don't want to repeat this pattern as she didn't sleep without milk in the night until she was 2! I didn't do anything different, she just grew out of it but I don't want to have to wait that long this time around. I also don't want my older one to be woken up by leaving the baby to cry which has happened a few times when we have left her to see if she will go back to sleep without milk.

I have spoken to friends about this but they all said their babies just stopped waking for milk in the night whereas mine haven't. I don't really want to go cold turkey with giving no milk or doing controlled crying however I am willing to give it a go if people think it may be of use. Please does anyone have any tips or advice as we are all ending up very tired! Thank you

[FusionChefGeoff]

I know you said you didn't want anything dramatic but I did cold turkey on milk about this age.

I picked a week to try it and dropped a lot of activities etc from our normal daytime routine so I could focus on doing some things to help:

• make sure she was eating or drinking milk at every available opportunity (to switch the habit you've mentioned of getting all milk at night)
• ditched milk for naps and just cuddled / rocked to sleep
• stayed strong on cuddling - rocking back to sleep instead of milk at every wake up

It worked a treat! She only needed about 4 nights of cuddles and then she seemed to break the habit of needing milk to go back to sleep.

Short and sharp and worked for us. Good luck.

[Babiecakes0435]

It's natural for baby's to still be up a few times a night at nine months.
I wouldn't not feed if they wanted I also have a 9 month old so know it's not easy but it won't last forever.

A baby's diet should be mainly milk based for the first year anything extra is just for fun until 1.

[CFusi]

Hi tiredmum1234, did you try anything and did it work? My DD tries to go back to sleep but unless she has milk she wakes again 20 mins later. She always goes straight back to sleep straight after milk but last night she was waking every 2 hours and I'm going back to work! Please let me know if you found a solution!