Upset that my breast fed DC prefers a bottle

[needthistowork]

During the day i can breast feed DS2 (20 weeks) ok, although he wont take the breast for comfort like DS1 would, during the night he is fine on the breast too.

But in the evening he will not take the breast but will take a bottle and i dont know why but i am sad about this and see it as the begining of the end of breast feeding, I fed DS1 till 15m.

Not sure why im posting, just to share my saddness or in the hope someone will tell me to stop being so daft as its only one feed a day

Of course it's ok. He gets breast all of the rest of the time :)

Have you tried offering the breast when he's a bit less tired?

I dont think he is over tierd as he is refussing breast milk from 8pm onwards but is still up till 10:30- 11pm before he settles to sleep.

Since newborn he has always come to bed with me around then and if i try to get him to sleep earlier he just screams (i had another thread about sleep routines/cues but went to my mums over the long weekend so havent made any progress there)

I can understand why you're sad, I never let DD have a bottle as I was worried she'd prefer it and I'd be devastated. But in reality, it is only one feed and he'll take the breast all the rest of the time so perhaps it's just because it's the end of the day and he's tired after a busy day so prefers a feed that takes less effort to get. As long as you don't start offering a bottle instead of breast at other times (unless you want to) there's no real reason to think this is the beginning of the end.

I spent nearly 4 months in the evening thinking my baby just wouldn't sleep until around 10/10.30pm. Once I realised the problem (he was tired enough but not calm enough to sleep) I fixed him in an evening. He now has a 6pm bedtime.

I do suspect your baby is tired, too. Does he have a clear 'window' of time in the daytime after he's woken up and needs to have a nap again? My baby goes 2.5-3 hours. After 3 hours of being awake he'll start to get overtired. Once they're overtired they become much harder to settle until they finally burn out late in the evening. I worked on getting him calm enough to sleep within this timeframe. (lights down everywhere, no tv, lullabies, stories, rocking, feeding, bath etc). I just told myself that he was tired enough but that he also needed to become calm enough.

I don't mean to patronise. I'm just writing in the terms that made most sense to me. I wish I'd known a lot sooner.

I hope this helps. Let me know if it does?

Thanks for the advice, my plan was to take him up to bed do a baby massarge (sp) with his eczema cream put his pjs on ( i have started to put him in day clothes, although prefer baby grows on him i thought it may help him know its bed time) lights off, sing a song, feed, sleep.

I planned to do this at 10:30 for a week then 10 for a week then 9:30 .....

took him up at 10 tonight he screamed a lot and settled at 11. (and needed resettling after 40 mins)

Would you reccomend just take him up at 8 (6 is to early for us DH wouldnt see him)

My DD goes up at 8pm and usually asleep by 9pm. We graduated that back from going up at 10pm and I think you're right to take it slowly with moving it back. Occasionally I've put her down a lot earlier when she's been dead beat and not slept much in the day and she's always woken up for another feed whereas if I put her down at normal time she's down for the night. If he's waking after 40mins then that's about 1 sleep cycle for a baby. Do you pick him up straightaway when he wakes or wait to see if he goes back off? I'm not suggesting CIO or CC but my DD will sometimes wake and grizzle or moan for a few minutes (can feel like a lot longer though) and then go back off so I usually wait to see if it develops to a cry. If it does then I pick her up straightaway as I won't let her cry. On the odd occasion she's woken crying, I've put the light on to get her and she's crying in her sleep so I turned it off quickly so not to wake her and she stopped.

My experience is to move it right back. We kept my son on a later schedule so that my partner could see him but in the end we decided that only an early bedtime worked. However, try it - just work out when his nap needs to be in order to aim for a later bedtime. I suspect he screamed last night because he was already overtired. When did his previous nap finish?

DS slept till 10 this morning (waking for resettleing during the night) and fed at 7 (he is usually up around 8am). And only had a nap from around 1:30 till 3. He would have slept around 6/6:30 but i kept hi up with the plan to give him a bottle 7:30 and bed for 8, took him up around 8 (as was busy with DS1 till then) but he didnt settle till 9:45, although less crying than last night.

He goes around 3 - 4 hours during the day between sleeps.

I do try to leave him if its just a wimper but it always leads on to a cry

In answer to G1nger's last question he had a nap ast night at 8pm for around half an hour

You could try feeding him back to sleep when he's stirring from his next evening nap. Before he awakens too far. Another thing to consider is setting a waking up time in the morning.