Offering water to stop nightfeeds - pls help me with 7mo DD?

[titferbrains]

Have offered water for last 4 nights. She took it on 1st 2 nights, we were up with her for 2 hrs and then I gave calpol as I could see she was struggling to get to sleep and felt it was her teeth.

Last 2 nights she refused water. Woke at 4.30 on Sunday night, and 3.50 last night (but went to bed a bit earlier last night so roughly same time). Sunday night I sat with her on my lap and sh patted/stroked till 5.45am, then fed her as she was crying a lot rather than trying to go to sleep on me.

This morning very cross again when offered water and quite cross generally about not being fed. she almost fell asleep about 3 times but started crying. I could hear her little tummy rumbling and I think she really "hit the wall" so I fed her at 4.55am. She fed for about 15 min - 10 min one boob then 5 min other so a full feed - then went down without a peep and I woke to hear her playing at 8.22 this morning (should have set alarm DOH).

So what do I do now? reintroduce a dream feed in the hope of her going thru till 6/7, or offer a water FF at 4am if/when she wakes up, or keep trying to stretch her when she wakes and see how this goes? Or offer less and less of a full FF each night?

She has been up for at least an hour for over a week now and I'm very tired. Feeling better for having longer stretches of sleep but am desperate to get thru the night till 6/7. I know she's doing really well but...

posting this on sleep too.

anyone done this??

In my experience, if a baby wakes in the night, its usually because they are hungry, not because they are simply thirsty. What I have done with both my dcs, is increase the food/milk they have during the day, give them their final feed at 10.30pm and eventually they go through the night. Both DCs were sleeping through by 3 months in my case, so I was very lucky.

I know your sleep is being interupted, but I think she would settle more quickly if you fed her, rather than gave water. You too could then get back to sleep.

That's just my opinion, but hope it helps

thanks, I'm offering as much food as poss, feeding every 2.5 hrs!! but guess I'll have to try harder. Also read that it's good to try to stop dream feed at 7 months so didn't want to go back to this. Guess it's the best solution for now tho.

BTW wasn't giving water because of thirst, read elsewhere on MN that you can offer water to help them stop waking in the night, they stop waking as it's not worth waking up for... saw that a couple of people had success with this so tried it. Clearly helped up to a point as she is not waking at all until 4am.

from 6 months I started offering prgressively less milk at the middle of the night feed by an ounce every week or so. He gave the feed up at 8 months. An alternative is to offer progressively diliuted milk so that they make up the lost calories during the day rather than in the night.

I got fed up doing night feeds too but found a method that worked after reading about it on here - google "jay gordon night weaning" it worked for us. I don't really co-sleep anymore but the technique is very gentle and gradual so appealed to me.

Basically for the first while you still feed when they wake but not for a full feed, just enough for a wee bit milk and comfort, then put them back down awake. I did this at around 6 or 7 months with DD, just fed her for a couple minutes and then unlatched her and put her down, she seemed comforted after a cuddle and the breast, although she did have a whinge it wasn't the full blown crying that I'd had if just didn't offer milk.

Until I did this DD was still up 2 or 3 times a night for a full feed. After a week of me restricting feeds she stopped needing fed at night, she also started eating a decent amount of food during the day. I felt like before she hadn't been hungry as filling up on milk all night.