Help - frequent night waking

[Monkeysmum]

Hi can anyone help, my daughter is 4 1/2 months and is waking up to 10 times a night, she used to only wake once a night until about a month ago, she is breast fed and that has been going fairly well, I am considering trying a bottle of formula tonight to see if it makes a difference as we are getting desparate, however when I started mix feeding with my other two children that seemed to be the point at which breast feeding went pear shaped, does anyone have experience of successfully continuing to breast feed whilst giving one bottle of formula a day? Any help appreciated!

Is she feeding for the same length of time as she used to? By now she doesn't need to feed that many times in the night. If it isn't a growth spurt (and if it has been going on for a month then it probably isn't) it sound like she is needing you every time she rouses and needs to settle back down.

I would try a dummy before formula to see if that helps?

Poor you, I have been complaining lately about my (same age) DD getting up 3 times for feeds! I spoke to the hospital bf counsellor who asked loads of questions and it seems she might have just been unsettled and not necessarily hungry so we tried to settle her as much as possible without feeding and it has cut the waking a bit. You may already try everything - I think I was too quick to assume she needed food and as this is my first, I probably have been doing things wrong! I had planned to introduce formula slowly and have done at bedtime for a week and it hasn't stopped her needing her night feeds, though I know people who it has helped. It doesn't seem to have affected my supply too much so far. Could you express afterwards to keep the supply up? Was it a supply problem or breast refusal in the past? Will she take the bottle? Mine did for a while, then refused, but now seems happy again after using a Nuk bottle rather than Avent. Sorry if that's not much help.

Thanks for your replies, she only feeds twice in the night the other times it is a case of needing her dummy put back in or just being really awake and 'chatting'loudly to us, we can't really allow her to get upset or cry it out as my other children wake up and then we have an even bigger problem. I think the dummy is a big part of the problem as soon as she starts coming out of a sleep cycle and its not there she wakes, I know that we have to stop using it but at the moment I can't allow my other two to be too tired for school which happens if she doesn't have it put back in, catch 22!
Racers it seemed to be refusal rather than supply that was a problem in the past.

Any chance she could learn to use her thumb or are you not keen to go down that road? We try to with ours but it's not foolproof and we return to the dummy at night often, plus there's only us to disturb so it's easier for us to try this.

Re refusal - is there anything useful on kellymom.com? It's a great site - there's some stuff on bottlefeeding. Is this any good? www.kellymom.com/bf/weaning/weaning-partial.html I can't help with personal experience as she has never refused the boob (yet!), only the bottle.

Good luck

she has found her thumb but won't seem to put it in at night, if we try to help her find it she gets really upset!
I will definitely give the kellymom site a look, thanks for the tip, also good to know your daughter hasn't refused the boob after mixed feeding, I am hoping that as she seems to have been quite a natural breast feeder from day one, unlike my other 2, that maybe she will be ok. Thanks for the help, i'm just hoping this phase will be over soon!

Yes, I hope it passes soon for you! The only boob related problems I had with bottle feeding was early on, when I had given her EBM now and then her latching on wasn't as good at the next feed but that soon got better and she's such an expert by now, it doesn't seem to interfere. Now she's having a bottle a day instead of every week, I suppose things could change but so far, so good. I know you're supposed to keep the flow lower than you would if purely bottle fed partly not to overwhelm them but also I imagine so they don't get too frustrated with the boob! HTH also. Let us know how you get on. Hope you manage to get some rest in the day

Another thought - we do this - have you tried 'white noise'? We have a little radio, seems to settle her and we just turn it down a bit when we go to bed and put earplugs in to drown the sound out (we can still hear her stirring, never mind crying!)