Will a bottle feed help her sleep?

[Sunflowergirl2011]

Hi all, I would appreciate some advice. DD2 is 5 months old (just) and predominatly breast fed (has approx 1 bottle per week). Since she was about 3 months she has been a pretty good sleeper at night (last feed 10ish, sleeps through to 5 ish) - thank goodness as I am someone who needs my sleep! However, in the past week she has started waking up much more - 12,2,4,8 (ish) I think she is hungry as nothing seems to settle her until i feed her. She will then have a good feed and go to sleep During the day I feed her (as I always have) approx every 3 hrs, but if she is crying I always offer milk so sometimes more frequent than 3 hrs. Any ideas on why the sudden change? I don't remember my older daughter doing this. I was thinking of giving her one bottle a day to try to fill her up more and get her to sleep. Do you think this will work? And if so, is it best to do it just before bed, or earlier in the day (I think i read on her that dropping the last feed of the day is most problematic for milk supply!). I don't realy want to start weaning her yet as plan to do BLW. Or could she be overtired? She doesn't seem to sleep much in the day any more either! Sorry for rambling, my brain is fuddled from lack of sleep!

There's no evidence that formula top-ups help a BF baby to sleep. It sounds a bit like the 4 month (ish) sleep regression, I don't think it happens to all babies so that might be why you've not experienced it before.

I don't think there's a lot you can do other than ride it out, sorry :( You could try and feed her as much as you can during the day so that she's getting plenty of calories.

Well, you could try a bottle and it might work. How about trying a bottle of ebm, although obviously you can try formula if you prefer.

Kellymom has some information on bottles and sleep here

Not what i wanted to hear! :( But thanks both for the info.

Sunflower, have you tried feeding her more often in the day?

Sorry but I've tried what you are now suggesting before and it did not work at all on DS.

JJJ - I try to feed her as much as I can during the day. Its hard as I have a 20 month old as well but try to offer every couple of hours or whenever she is unsettled during the day and if she is asleep don't let her go more than 3 hours. Do you think more than that might help? Decided against buying formula yesterday thanks to the advice on here and kelly mom. Spoke to health visitor at clinic today and she said to wean her

Am a bit at your HV too. There again ours usually tell bfing Mums who's LOs are having a bf to try a bottle as they are obviously not producing enough milk. Think poor advice from HVs is pretty standard unfortunately.

Both of mine actually got worse for a while once we started weaning. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear.

Could you try to feed her every 2 hours during the day? Alternatively you could always try a top up with ebm or maybe even both. I know expressing can be time consuming though.