14 month old dilemma

[wildflowersummermeadow]

Hi, our 14 month STILL won't sleep through the night -he's still waking up on average about twice a night for a bottle feed.

He's not eating much food at all during the day either - he's not really a fan of food, which sounds odd, but he eats a couple of mouthfuls then tends to squirm away, turn his head, clamp his mouth shut - he much prefers his formula...I assume this is probably part of the problem - although on the days that he has eaten quite a lot of food I have been hopeful that he'll sleep through the night due to not being hungry and he's woken up more than ever for some milk.

Some people have mentioned the dreaded controlled crying - but the problem with that is we have a 3-year-old who would be kept awake all night (small house), not to mention the neighbours on either side of us who have children who get woken up by ours in the night (and vice versa) (small TERRACED house!).

A doctor I spoke to suggested putting him downstairs in the living room out of earshot in the night - but that would mean waking him up when we went to bed in order to transfer him into a travel cot downstairs in order to make him cry - which seems a bit of a long winded way of going about things...

Does anyone have any ideas? Any thoughts v much appreciated - rather desparate here.
xxx

Thank you, that's really helpful

Water is a good idea at night - will have a go. I think it is mainly a habit thing with him, so at least he will still get the sucking the bottle part.

He's being offered mainly pureed food at the moment - he does like feeding himself with various things though - it hadn't occurred to me that it might be the "feeding" part rather than the actual food that's the problem.

Food for thought (ha)
thanks
x

I was going to say what StrandedBear said. My DS is also 14mo. He forced us into doing BLW because he only accepted a spoon for a short while (between 6 and 7mo) and then completely refused it. If we were still trying to spoon feed him he would just scream at us for hours every day eat very little. At first it was messy but now he's really quite neat and even sometimes uses his baby fork- I would say it is worth a go.

That said my DS is not a brilliant sleeper. We still dream feed him at 10.30ish to get him through the night- could you try that? However, even with that he wakes up at 5.30am hollering for his breakfast!

Hi there - things are SO much better when it comes to the eating. I followed the advice given about him wanting to have control, and it worked. From the first day I gave him either finger food or his own spoon and tried not to mind when the spag bol dribbled down the walls and slimed under our toes. He ate loads himself, and while he was distracted I found actually I could get several mouthfuls of food into him as well without any of the usual complaints. He now eats a really quite hearty amount.

So, THANK YOU!!

He does still wake up once or twice for some milk but it seems to be more like a 1am feed and a 5am feed at the moment...so I suppose that's not too bad! At least I don't feel as though he's getting all his nutrition in the middle of the night any more.

Now we've got to deal with the 3 year old who has stopped sleeping and I think is a whooooole different post! Sigh.

water his milk down by a proportion each night until it's just water. It'll mean there's no reward for him waking. Hopefully then he'll eat more in the day too.