Advice for 5.5 month old feeds and sleep

[snowchick1977]

Pretty desperate now for advice.

Dd is 5.5 months old. Ebf until 12 weeks when we introduced a bottle of formula at night due to my return to work. My supply is all over the place and has resulted in me stopping breastfeeding because she didnt feed for 2 lots of 12 hours when I was at work and that kind of ruined things :(

We have gotten to the stage where she takes 10oz of hungry baby formula 5 times in the day and 3 times at night....pretty much every 3 hours, but its the nights that are killing me, she feeds at 7, 10, 430 and 7. So 80oz in total!

She was showing signs of being interested in food so i gave her 3 meals yesterday as well as all that milk, and she still didnt sleep any better.

She naps in the day but only if we take her oyt in the car or in her buggy.

She is generally a very very happy baby, happy to amuse herself for up to an hour, ok if I walk off and will go to other people happily, not clingy, a joy to be around BUT she just doesnt sleep.

This seems like a huge amount of milk and food to be having....any advice?

Please note that even when she was breasfeeding she never slept longer than 4 hour stretches at night. I havent had longer than a 4 hour sleep myself for 6 months.

TIA X

No solid advice here, my 3 were interesting sleepers to say the least! But, there's no such thing as far as a baby is concerned as a huge amount of milk and food. they eat when they are hungry and will stop when they are full. Have you thought about weaning her properly and increasing her 7pm milk and dropping her 10pm?

I know it's a flaming offence but if she's been that hungry weaning early is probably right. Ds was taking 8 x 9oz bottles of hungry milk by 21 weeks when we finally weaned him. He was much happier and slept better, though it wasn't an overnight thing. Dh had wanted to wean for a couple of weeks before this but I was determined to follow the 'rules'! I now feel so bad about it as I didn't use common sense and my gut which knew he needed more. He was a big (9lb 6oz), overdue by 12 days baby and he was probably ready at 18 weeks.
His system took a while to get used to solids and it was a momth or so before he stopped pooing in the night. He hadn't done this since a few weeks old. So he'd wake but, a quick nappy change and cuddle and, he'd go back down without milk.

Sleep deprivation clouds your judgement so much that you often just don't hear your own voice and listen to the professionals. But they don't spend 24/7 with your baby.

Fwiw, I think you've done the right thing. You just need to give it time.

Another thing to be flamed for, but here goes... Have you left her to grizzle in the night or are you up at the first whimper? Is she in her own room yet?

We had to move ds out at 7 weeks when he outgrew the moses basket (told you he was a big'un. This meant he wasn't woken by us and when they're not right there you do leave them a little longer. He often fell back over if left for a few minutes. When he was first born I truely believe we wrecked his natural sleeping pattern by going to him at every noise and changing his nappy at every feed. We did this for months until I mentioned it to a friend and she looked at me like I was a fool. Change for poos only overnight.

Sorry for the epic post but hth. Merry xmas!

If occasionally we did feed him he got a carton (7oz) of normal no. 1 milk.

I was with paediatrician yesterday and mentioned that my ds (same age) was feeding a lot and during the night a lot too. She told me to wean him fully. I told her I had started slowly, and she said to up the pace and get solids well established. He too was / is big baby and she said he was more than able to cope! Hth!!

80oz that is a lot of milk. Have you taken her to see a Dr as that amount of over eating might indicate a problem (reflux for example) and also it might be putting a strain on her kidneys as the renal solute load of formula is higher than bm (plus she is taking nearly 3 times the rec. amount of formula a day).

Have you considered swapping down to a newborn teat to make it harder work for her to get the milk or giving her a dummy part way through a feed? I'd not normally even think of restricting a baby's feeds but 80oz is a phenomenal amount of milk - for bf babies between 1-6m the usual feed amounts are 19-30oz a day with 25oz being the average.

Have you seen this on how to bottle feed - not to be patronising but parents aren't generally shown how to bottle fed their babies and how to spot signs of overwhelm-ment by the baby during feeding.

HTH

Sorry to hear about your sleep deprivation, you have my full sympanthy as my 17 months DD still not sleeping through the night!!!

To be honest with you, it does take a while before she will sleep through the night and weaning her does ensure you that she is feed and the food will last longer in her body. You could try giving her baby food then follow by milk for the 7pm feed and hopefully that will last a bit longer.

Not too sure is this helpful or not, but my DD doesn't sleep through the night till she is 6 months old and we had to go through control crying... sound harsh, but you ll do anything to get a decent night sleep.

I hope the weaning will go well and your DD will sleep through the night soon