Anyone have advice on sleeping and the transition from breast feeding to formula?

[Verytiredlady]

My 9 month old is sleeping really badly and I'm wondering whether to drop the breast feeding in favour of formula. He slept really well until he was about 4 months old, regularly doing a 6 hour stretch at some point during the night, waking up for a feed and then going straight back to sleep again. I don't know what happened at 4 months (teething pain? Developmental milestone? Growth spurt? Who knows!). Now I'm feeding him when he goes to bed (around 7), when I go to bed (around 10.30), when he wakes up in the night (can be anywhere from 12.30 to about 3) and then again at around 5-5.30. Sometime he even wakes up for another feed. He is often awake for a minute or so after a feed and then goes to sleep without rocking etc in his cot so he can go to sleep by himself but only following a feed. If he wakes up for extra feeds I sometimes cave in and co sleep because I am so tired I start getting a bit shaky. Maybe once or twice a week.
HV says his day time feeding/eating is spot on and agrees I couldn't manage to get in another milk feed without putting him off one of his meals. He has breakfast at 7.30 (porridge and some sliced fruit), lunch (something proteiny and vegetably) at around 11.30, milk at 2.30 (drinks about 100ml of formula from a cup - no difference in his night time sleep after changing to milk in a cup rather than a breast feed) and dinner at around 5.30 (variable depending on what we're all having but always has puréed fruit mixed with baby rice and plain yogurt to finish). His weight is fine. He's fine. He just won't sleep for a decent stretch anymore!
The breast feeding advisor at our local centre just keeps banging on about demand feeding, keep feeding him, if that's what he wants then feed him, breast milk is more important than solid food, etc etc but it is killing me. My boobs are getting sore and I've had enough. I go back to work part time in 6 weeks and I also have a little girl who has just started school. I don't think it is unreasonable to want more than 4-5 hours of broken sleep a night! I have had zero success getting him to take milk from a bottle (Husband works long hours over 6 days a week so he can't really help with this) and he will only take a max of 100ml from a cup.
I know this isn't a specific question but does anyone have any advice?

It is your decision! You have done him proud - all babies ought to have their colostrum and after that it is good but not essential to feed your own milk for the first months. My son started follow on artificial milk powder (please don't use 'Formula' as it is a marketing term invented by big business!) at nine months no problems. He had always loved his feeds but my DD found it too much like hard work and she 'dumped' the breast at 7 months. I had expressed my milk (using an electric pump) since they went to nursery at 5m so they were used to having my milk by bottle. In fact when they ran out one day and he seemed hungry they offered him artificial and he took one sip and looked at them aghast as though they were trying to poison him - which amused them greatly! Of course human milk is incredibly sweet and modified cow's milk is utterly tasteless and flat. All babies are different and this is a two-way street as so are we.
Sounds like you have made the decision - go for it!
But be wary of having expectations. Artificial baby milk is less digestible and it seems as though this leads them to sleep longer but there may be other factors at work that may not be apparent. One thing though - his nappies will stink with the undigested residue! Oh and no baby ever starved itself so stick to your guns

Very firstly! you say you are returning to work in 6 weeks. I'd give one of the bfing helplines a call and ask talk to them about devising a return to work Oman. The last thing you want is to suddenly drop lots of feeds and end up at work with mastitis speaks from experience. Have you got the helpline numbers?

If his slerp went to pot at 4 months and is horrendous now, sorry but I don't think introducing formula will help him sleep. There is a sleep regression at 4 months and another biggy at 9 months. According to kellymom formula makes little difference to sleep! despite what the formula companies would like you too believe.

You mention his solids in the day but not bfs. How many bfs is he having in the day?

That first paragraph of mine is awful. Meant to say talk to a BFC on one of the helplines and talk to them about returning to work. They should be able to help you come up with a plan to either stop bfing or to come up with a schedule that will fit around work.

Thanks for the replies! He has a breast feed around 6.30 but not another one until bedtime at 7. I use the ready made up Hipp Organic milk/formula in his porridge and he has some more from a cup at 2.30. If I try to give him any extra milk feeds it puts him off his other meals so the HV said not to as he is doing so well with his eating. So he is currently going to be ok on the day a week I will have to work from the office (the rest of my work will be done from home for a couple of hours at a time. It's more a problem of me having had enough sleep to work properly rather than how he will feed!). I'd be quite happy to carry on doing a feed at his bedtime, then again at my bedtime and then again first thing in the morning for another month or two. It's just the middle of the night feeds that I'm finding really hard. I suppose I'm concerned it might be just a habit that we need to try and stop. I don't know if he is actually hungry. I can't imagine he needs so many feeds - he's the chubbiest baby out of all the ones I know! He's pretty happy and laid back most if the time unless really teething. But I don't know anymore...too tired to figure it out! Thanks for your help.

Thanks JJJ. I hadn't heard of them. I like the idea of helping to come up with a plan! I stopped BFing my daughter at 11 .5 months so she had 2 weeks of formula and then on to cows milk! But then she only needed two drinks of it a day at that ago and the rest went in her food....

At that age - not ago! All going pear shaped...

Your HV is a little wrong on this one. Two daytime feeds isn't very much at this age and he seems to be telling you this by waking you up in the night. Until he's one it's far more important to get the milk in him rather than the food as the BM has more calories and nutrition than virtually anything you can give him.

I'd ditch the formula in his cereal and just use cows milk, it will be cheaper and there is no need for formula in his food.

I know this sounds like a backward step but if it was me, I'd put in a feed at around 10.30. Yes he might eat less lunch but the BM will have more calories. On the day you aren't there whoever has him can offer a cup of milk instead.

Could you move the 2.30 milk to 2pm and do a feed then another feed at 4pm? Again these can be replaced by ebm or formula on the day you aren't there. Then hopefully he will eat his dinner and have another feed at 7pm and 10pm and will hopefully start to take his bfs in the day rather than at night

Did you say you have the helpline numbers?

Thought you might like this information from Kellymom too and here are the numbers for the Breastfeeding Helplines. The BFC will be able to give you information and support whether you want to continue to bf or stop

Hi,
First of all, well done for breastfeeding for this long and I wouldn't feel bad at all about wanting to switch over to formula at this stage. My son is also 9 months and I'm currently in the process of switching over from breastfeeding to formula too. He has always been a bottle refuser so we use the doidy cup which works well. I notice you feed him dinner at around 5.30 and breastfeed at 7pm- don't know if it'd make any difference but we have dinner about 6-6.15 with his feed after a bath at around 7.15. Just wondering if pushing dinner and feed a little later might help him feel fuller for the night, not sure?
Personally, I think it sounds more like habit than hunger that he's waking up and looking for feeds so often each night. Looks like his diet during the day is good, and they can get very reliant on being fed back to sleep. A few months ago, I spoke to the nursery nurse at my local centre and she advised dropping the night feeds as he was weaning well, and like you, I was really tired and fed up feeding multiple times each night and also looking after a 3 year old as well. We are very routine driven in our house and have always found it to pay off with our other child, so I bought Andrea Grace' Gentle Sleep Solutions book, and I have to say it was great. I gradually shortened the feeds each night until he was only feeding for a couple of minutes each time and being put back down slightly awake to resettle by himself. Then I stopped feeding him between 7.30pm and 7am and he adapted really quickly tbh. We went in when he woke if he didn't resettle and got upset, and simply said sash, nighttime, time to go asleep, and the whole process took a few weeks and you have to be consistent (and it's hard when they're upset and you're tempted to breastfeed) but it paid off.
Then he got loads of teeth at the same time which I think threw his routine off a little, so recently he was waking at 5am and seemed unable to resettle and would cry on and off until I got him up at 7am. Again, we kept the same routine and went in and comforted him but told him it was still nighttime etc, and a fortnight later, he's again back to a 6.30-7ish wake up which is fab.
I hope that's of some help to you at least, and hopefully with a bit of time and trying a similar approach, he will settle better for you overnight.
Good luck and hang in there, I'm sure things will improve soon!

Forgot the key thing sorry! He must go to bed awake so once you've breastfeed him, read him a story and then put him to bed a few minutes later so that he learns to self settle and knows when he is going into the cot so he's not surprised when he then wakes up there later in the night. This is a cornerstone of the Andrea Grace approach but I've also read about it elsewhere too.

I have a 9 month old too. I found as soon as teeth and mobility milestones started happening that his night time waking became more frequent. He is my third and his sisters were the same.

In terms of food and feeds mine has:

6-6.30am breastfeed
7.30am cereal
8.15 top up breastfeed before school run
Nap
10.30am was breastfeeding but have swapped for a yoghurt and biscuit recently
12-1pm (depending on snack time) lunch of protein and vegetables
Nap
2.30pm breastfeed before school run.
4pm snack - small pieces of cheese, cut up grapes etc... Sometimes has top up breastfeed
5.30pm dinner - protein and vegetable, yoghurt pudding if still hungry
7.30-8pm breastfeed
10.30-11pm ish breastfeed
2-3am ish breastfeed

On bad nights he can wake two hourly over night, but I pre-empt and give a dose of calpol/ibuprofen with the late night feed if I know his teeth are bothering him.

Looking at ds's pattern he has a much higher number of milk feeds than you list, maybe JJJ's advice of adding another morning milk feed in would be good.

I am thinking of offering water only at night between midnight and 6am. I did this with my first when she was a bit older. My husband went in to her and after a week she didn't wake.

Good point about your husband Anotherstitchintime- we also did that and it helped a lot as he definitely sees me and thinks feed me! So if husband/partner can help out until the new routine is embedded a bit, it's a big help...plus I quite enjoyed being able to turn over and go back to sleep while he got up to resettle him after 9 months of me getting up to him!

My son hasn't slept through the night since the 4m sleep regression and at 10m still wakes twice for milk. I had some success cutting down the feeds - basically feeding him only as last resort if rocking, cuddling etc didn't work. For some reason this prevented him from waking as often. I don't know if I could persuade him to sleep all night because I haven't tried (I don't need to get up early).
In answer to your question though, giving formula at night at this age makes absolutely zero difference to my baby's sleep. He is normally breastfed but had a bottle last night at his grandparent`s and he woke up 4 times last night.