What amount of feeding/waking at night do you think is reasonable for a 6mth old?

[MyCatIsABiggerBastardThanYours]

DS is 6mths old, around 20lb (looks like a 9mth old). He is on 3 meals a day, plus 3 breast feeds and one bottle of FF at bed time (about 6pm).

He'll sleep from 6/6:30 for 3-4 hrs, when he wakes and then needs settling, but I don't feed him then and he will go for another 2 or 3hrs before a feed. This means his first feed of the night is around midnight.

My problem then is that he then wakes every 2hrs to be nursed back to sleep. I'm happy to sleep train (probably settling him back to sleep rather than CC, although I will leave him for a few mins to see if he settles himself, which sometimes he does earlier in the evening) BUT, what is a reasonable amount of time to make him wait for another feed? 3hrs? 4hrs?

Btw - he co-sleeps from around midnightish (first part of night spent in cot), although will go back into cot happily but still wakes every 2hrs from midnight. He also settles himself for naps and first big sleep of the night.

Any thoughts very gratefully received.

[JJ1471]

My ds is 6 1/2 months but he's much smaller, only just 14lb. He has three 'meals' (doesn't eat much!), four 5-6oz bottles during the day and then one more during the night. We put him to bed at 8pm, his feed is usually around midnight (I don't feed him if he wakes before) and then he can easily last until 6am when he starts his day. I have fed him once in the last few weeks at around 3.30am but I only gave him a small bottle to help him settle.

If he wakes before 6am then I often end up taking him into bed with me as he won't settle back to sleep in his cot. He will usually go back to sleep, so I know that he is capable of lasting without a feed.

He's increased his milk intake a lot over the last few weeks (previously each bottle was only about 3oz) so in the next few weeks I may start trying to reduce the amount in his night time bottle and see how that goes. At the moment with his weight being a bit low I'm reluctant to do that.

I would say that you could start with trying for just the one feed during the night and see how that goes for a bit, then slowly reduce the amount of time that he feeds for? As long as you're happy that he's getting all his calories during the day.

[MyCatIsABiggerBastardThanYours]

Thanks JJ - I was thinking that I could get him down to one feed at night, say around midnight - 1am ish (usually when he wakes up), then not again til around 6am. I'm just not sure whether that is reasonable or not (he is quite a big lad). I think he is getting his calories in the day, usually eats loads for breakfast, less for lunch, less again for tea, but does fill up on milk then.

He is my 2nd dc but my DD was pretty skinny and we had loads of problems with eating and sleep with her so don't really know what to expect from a 'normal' baby, as it were.

[Seona1973]

at that age ds went from 8pm to 6am (ish) with 1 night feed. When he did have more night feeds I tried to make it that no less then 4 hours had elapsed since the last feed. (not when he was really small though)

[MyCatIsABiggerBastardThanYours]

Thanks Seona. I thought that one feed would be reasonable so that's what I'll aim for over the next few days. I'm not in a particular rush but would like to break the nursing back to sleep habit he seems to have between midnight and 6am!

[ches]

6 month growth spurt can take a long time, sometimes a month. Solids is a red herring; their bodies don't digest it fully (if at all) this young so the solids calories are not available to fuel the growth spurt like milk calories are. Since you're already doing one FF why not just offer formula at night?

[Fufulina]

Hi MyCat - my DD is also huge (98th centile) and at that age was still feeing twice a night - about midnight and 3 (ish) (bed at 6ish and awake at 5.30/6ish). She's just dropped the 3ish feed (about 2 weeks ago) and is 8 months this week. She dropped it pretty much herself to be honest.

[Hopefully]

DS (now 11 months) was still feeding at least twice a night at that stage, usually 3 times (at, say 11/12, 2/3 and 5/6, or 1/2 and 5/6). He genuinely seemed hungry at these feeds, and took a reasonable amount (BF, so hard to be precise).

I was just at the point of contemplating taking some kind of action (trying harder to resettle or something, didn't particularly want to do CC as I knew I wouldn't see it through), when he suddenly went down to one feed a night at about 7 months, then at 8 months started sleeping 10-11 hours.

I really think it was just a v long growth spurt/getting used to eating proper food and feeling full from it (even though he ate loads from the beginning, unlike most BLW babies).