My baby refuses to eat in the day.

[BabyBooBa]

Or rather, they don’t appear to be hungry.

The past week or so, my baby has eaten almost exclusively at night time. She is 8 months old, woke up at 6am this morning and has so far had:

• porridge offered for breakfast, none eaten.
• bottle offered at nap time, a couple of oz’s taken.
• lunch I tried both pasta and a pureed pouch, both of which she refused to eat.

I can only assume this is because she is having so many calories at night. She’s currently waking every 2-3 hours wanting bottles - she will have 7oz at 5pm, then another full bottle at 7.30pm, etc throughout the night. She slows down around 2am where she will still cry for a bottle but only take a few ozs.

I have spoken to friends and family who have all said I need to offer her a final bottle at around 10pm, then just be strict and not offer bottles / food until 6am. They say this will get her out of her night time eating cycle. There is also advice online stating similar.

I do feel this is cruel though as she will be waking hungry and I will just be offering her a dummy / shushing her back to sleep / she won’t sleep at all.

Any advice on what is advisable?

I’m also exhausted as I am having no sleep 😭

I had a similar problem with my dc at around the same age.

I started giving last bottle at 10pm, then only offer a small amount of water in a bottle until early morning, as offering dummy or cuddles didn't help. There was some grumpiness for two nights, until he became used to being hungry and eating more in the day, after that it was mostly resolved, apart from occasional waking in the night, maybe once or twice, which was resolved with a dummy or cuddles.

i would start by looking at milk intake and sorting that out. We dropped night time milk gradually by 6m so did an 11pm dream feed and then 7am morning feed.

the food is by the by at 8m. So I’d be offering it 3x per day before milk but wouldn’t be too fussed about what’s eaten

Food is still for fun at this stage, keep offering the meals and snacks and keep up the milk which is where they get all the nutrients they need

I’m not worried too much about the food, it’s the general intake. Since 6am she’s had 4oz of milk and nothing else. This must be because she’s eating so much at night that she’s not hungry. It’s the wrong way round.

I am sure as she gets better at food this will level out on its own.

however you could try increasing the spacing between feeds in increments if you didn’t want to do a complete overnight ban, which I agree is potentially going to be hard on her at this age. So if she’s going 3 hours, make it 4. Then once this is working, make it 4 hr 30. Then 5. But I’d expect a lot of crying and a lot less sleep, so personally, I would wait for it to sort itself out on its own but I do appreciate if you feel that’s not an option.

Try swapping the porridge to just before bed with some mashed up banana in it

I’ve had another thought! Reduce the ounces in the night feeds slowly, if you don’t want to cut her off completely you could reduce it?
Do you follow solid starts on instagram? They are great for babies getting into weaning and problems like lack of interest.
keep trying different foods - my little one loves to suck on a big strip of steak or meat from roast dinner. And pancakes! See what floats her boat and good luck, I know the sleep deprivation is so hard

I also have an 8m old DD... I find a lot of the problem with daytime feeds is distraction. She'd much rather play, look around and grab at things than drink her milk.

Can you find somewhere really boring to encourage more milk intake during the day? Like a dimmed room, or sitting in a particular chair... for some reason, my DD enjoys having a bottle in her buggy with the shade half over her!

Please don't start baby on a dummy. It is a habit that is sometimes difficult to break and often causes distress.

I would slowly reduce how much milk in a bottle at night and also water it down progressively so it becomes less attractive.

I also agree with @Sapphire387 to go somewhere uninteresting for food through the day.

When DD was small she was sleeping through but then got a stomach bug. She then wanted all of her milk during the night and very little in the day.
I actually went cold turkey at night with her to swop it back around. We were both exhausted and it was the only way to fix it.

Typically, after I wrote this post, she slept from 6pm - 7pm, waking to finish her bottle, then slept until 12.30am (woke for a full bottle), then woke at 6.30am! She’s had a full bottle this morning so hopefully we are back on track.

The only thing that was different is that she’s started rolling more consistently and last night she slept on her stomach… perhaps she’s just more comfortable!