When do they stop "needing" night-feeds

[Gargula]

Hi,
I know there is probably no hard and fast rule to this but was wondering when babies generally stop needing night-feeds if they are EBF?
My DD is 6.5 months and still wakes to feed 2/3 times per night. She started weaning at 6 months and likes her food and also hasn't dropped any day feeds as yet. So why oh why is she still feeding so often at night??
I'm getting very tired and ratty which isn't fair on my DS or DH, but don't want to start thinking about night weaning if she still needs it.
SIGH - why can't babies be simpler!!

depends whether that need is for food or for comfort.
my 16 month old still wakes up a couple of times a night to feed.
i doubt he "needs" it from a nutritional point of view, but he obviously needs the comfort. he has occasionally slept through, but 2 or 3 feeds a night is usual.

personally i feel that wanting comfort is as, if not more, important than nutrition so i am resigned happy to feed him in the night still

that said, as they get older i don't think it's unreasonable for them to learn that there are other ways of being comforted. ds3 will sometimes let dp cuddle him back to sleep, and we might build on that to get him sleeping through. but i wouldn't do it if it meant him getting very unhappy and crying a lot.

I suppose it depends if by need you are talking about nutritional need or other needs such as comfort and being close to somebody in the middle of the night.

Some babies do sleep 'through' the night early on and others don't. Some people just cope with the wakings (maybe by co-sleeping?) and others try and encourage their LOs to last a bit longer at night by some form of sleep training.

Personally I 've tried very gentle forms of night weaning such as trying to get DS back to sleep by just patting etc instead of feeding. He's one now and still wakes sometimes in the night and for me it's just quicker and easier to give him a quick feed if the patting doesn't work.

There's a good article about sleep on kellymom and Jay Gordon also has good stuff about nightweaning.

See here for kellymom

And finally on a not so positive note, there's a big sleep regression at about 9 months so that will probably throw another spanner in to the works.

I stopped night feeds at 11.5months. DC was waking 2-4 times a night. We were both using bfing to soothe her back to sleep and not because she was hungry.

TBH I don't know when the hunger to comfort switch happened,but I'd say it is fair to expect some babies to need night feeds for quite a long time.

hi, They are all so different. My daughter stopped night feeds at 9 weeks and my son was probably about 18 months. Both EBF.

My DH asked this morning 'when do we stop doing night feeds?' as DS had us up 3 times last night.

I just smiled at him and said when he's ready he'll stop on his own, at the moment he's still have ten minute feeds, which is longer than his day feeds.

I think it's just patience, isn't it?

I will probably get shouted down for this but if your baby feeds well during the day, they probably don't need the night feeds for nutrition but do it for comfort/out of habit. If night waking is making you too tired/cranky maybe try offering some water from a beaker or cuddles instead. I did this with my (exclusively breastfed) DC from six months as I knew he wasn't really hungry but was sucking for comfort. When he would wake up I would still get him out of his cot and sit down with him but instead of feeding, I would offer him a drink of water from a beaker and a cuddle and then put him back down. After a couple of weeks of this, he started waking up less and less, until eventually going the whole night (yay!). Cold turkey worked for us but I guess you can only do it if you're confident that your DC is getting enough food during day.

Hi,
Thanks for all your responses. I guess I did mean when do they nutritionally stop needing feeds.
There's no way I'm stopping now as I think she probably still needs it but I do want to stop sooner rather than later.
I admire people who continue to feed at night for an extended time but I wont be doing it. I have real trouble getting back to sleep after her feeds and am not in a happy place after the fourth wake up per night.
Thanks for the advice on stopping maya. Like I said I think she is still hungry but if we get to a year and she's still feeds multiple times a night I'll definitely try your method!
Thanks again

I think once they are 6 months and on solids, and are feeding well in the day, they should be able to go all night, esp with a top up feed at 10pm.

However some babies like the comfort of feeding in the night and some parents are happy to oblige. Personal choice.

DD and DS2 slept happily through the night without any prompting at that age, DS1 needed some sleep training.

This says over 3 months.

I think all babies are so different, so it's really difficult to say.

DD is 5 months old, ebf, and stopped waking for her night feeds when she was 5 weeks old. We're in the middle of the 4/5 month growth spurt, so I'm getting up somewhere between 4 and 6am for a feed at the moment, but I'm hoping she goes back to (her) normal soon.

The way I could tell that night time feeds weren't really feeds for my DC was that he behaved very differently during night feeds to day feeds. During the day he would suck very enthusiastically and you could really feel him draining the breast and see him swallow the milk down. During the night 'feeds' he sucked a lot less enthusiastically, the rhythm was all wrong, there was very little swallowing and I could feel that he was using the breast more as a dummy than a source of milk. The night 'feeds' would also last a lot longer (day 5 minutes, night sometimes 40 minutes).

I think of it like this, do you go 12hours without a drink? Even as an adult I don't. I know I probably could if I HAD to but wouldn't do naturaly.

Thinking like this why do we expect a 6month old baby to go 12hours though the night without anything (yes some do but that I think is just a personality thing). It's a bit to much to ask really. DD even now at 3years has a cup of water by her bed like me so if she needs a drink though the night she can have one. She does sleep though most nights now but didn't consitantly untill 2.5years.

The comfort thing is also an improtant factor, we deffantly had times when she was just in need off the closesnuess during the night that a cuddle brings. But I couldn't have left her to cry no more then if she had needed that cuddle during the day.

My GP said 8-9 months

FWIW DS2 (EBF) slept all night (10pm-7am) from 8 weeks to 16 weeks every single night and then woke up every single night from 16 weeks until he was weaned at 24 weeks. People kept on saying growth spurt but it wasn't, he just needed more milk than I could produce in the day.

At 8 weeks he was having 6 feeds (7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, 10pm). By 22 weeks it was 2 hourly feeds day and night so 12 feeds.

He is now 28 weeks and sleeps 10pm-7am but is now having 3 bottles of formula and 2 meals as well as 3 breastfeeds. Don't plan to cut out the 10pm feed until either he turns one or I stop breastfeeding whichever comes first.

Blimey I wouldn't cut night feeds for a 3 month old. That babycentre article is the biggest load of shite I've read in a long while.

We night-weaned DS when he was 20 months, because it had become clear that he wasn't thirsty, he just wanted a BF to have a cuddle and for comfort. I'm not sure that he was ready much before that though.

we just "sleep trained" dd (10 months) because she was waking 5 times a night(just suckling back to sleep) and I just couldn't cope anymore.
I think when babies just start eating, they need the food in addition to their usual milk, so there is not really a change to nursing patterns. only when they eat a substantial amount of food (in our case from 9 months) do they not need it anymore from nutritional point of view.

I will get flamed for this but I spoke to my DS paediatric dietician (he was very prem)about this, and she said nutritionally they stopped needing night feeds after they weighed 11lb. That was on the basis of a feed at 10-11 pm and one at 6-7 am but with an 8-10 hour gap. I was paranoid about not giving DS food if he needed it given he weighed 3lb at birth and for a long time tracked below 0.04 centile (now just over 25) but she was sure that it was fine to stop the night feeds. I therefore felt I had permission to do so and stopped over the next week (Picking ds up and shhing him if he woke). He hasn't had a nightfeed since and he has slept though almost every night since.

He was 5 and a half months actual age (3 months corrected) at the time, and exclusively BF. He also crossed up another centile line shortly after I stopped night feeds so it worked for us.

My dd, 10 months, has a bf before she goes to sleep & she'll be finished feeding about 10 or 11pm. She's up at 6.00 or earlier. I bf on demand in the day with meals & snacks & she has a big evening dinner. It's only just now that she's not having a bf in the small hours. It is tiring & I've been exhausted but I've follewed her ideas on when she needs to bf. Good luck. At 6 months my dd had teeth trouble & was working out how to move & this kept her awake & busy!

I still wake up occasionally in the night hungry or thirsty so I always worked on the basis that if DS woke up and wanted a feed, then he got one.

Now, at 2yo, he generally sleeps through but if he does wake up hungry or thirsty we have a banana and water at the ready. I didn't refuse him night feeds until he could talk because I could never be absolutely certain he wasn't hungry - why would you do that with a little baby?

Thanks all, some interesting points of view here.
I take the point that we can't expect babies to go for long periods with a drink - but, as an example, last night my DD was fed at 7pm and went straight to sleep, woke again at 10 was fed again, then woke at 10:30, 11 - difficult to settle so up until 12, up again at 2:30 and then again at 6. At each time she wanted to feed.
This isn't something that I can maintain longterm and I prefer to feel better during the day for my son (as I'm a crabby old mare when I haven't had enough sleep!)
Mousymouse I can see myself doing the sleep training thing at around the same time you did for your dd, when I'm sure her solid intake is improving.

11lb? My 3 month old weighs more than that but I'm not sure there's any way I could make him go through the night without feeding.

A baby of 6+ months though I think I would try offering water, a dummy, sshing back to sleep.

Both my dcs slept through from about 10 until 7 from 112 weeks. Ds was be at the time but DD wasn,t so being bf didn't make any difference. It,s quite normal for babies to give up night feeds at 3 months

Forgot to say no sleep training, they just stopped waking for feeds. They were also in our room .