How often does your 8 month old feed?

[Wildwaterfalls]

I had DD (8 months, bf) down to 4 feeds, which is good as she is starting nursery in 4 months so need to be reducing frequency.

Schedule as follows:
7am milk
8am breakfast
11am milk
12 lunch
3pm milk
5pm dinner
6pm milk

But DH suggested on the weekend to bf her before naps (at 9am and 1pm), which did make her sleep longer...

The problem now is our schedule is all messed up, and today she has had milk at 7am (as usual), 9am (pre nap), 11am (as usual) and 1pm (pre nap).

Combined with breakfast at 8am and lunch at 12 that is a lot of eating!

So just keen to hear others' schedules, particularly if naps are going well for you!

Dd2 does:

7:00 BF
8:00 breakfast (ready brek made with formula, toast)
12:00 Lunch
16:00 BF and snack
18:00 Dinner
19:00 BF

She has 30-60 minutes nap at 9, and 2 hours at 1. She's only recently dropped the mid morning feed, she eats loads at breakfast so I just offer her water through the morning, she doesn't seem hungry until lunchtime.

My 8 month old has a similarish pattern:

7am BF
8am Breakfast (weetabix or porridge)
11am BF after 1.5 hr nap
12.30 Lunch
3pm BF after 1.5 hr nap
6.30 BF before bath and bed.

Usually one BF overnight which I am trying to wean him off, but I can never be sure whether he needs it or not. Have had a few nights of attempted sleep training, when he went without a feed, but not without tears. Last night I fed him at 4.30am as he seemed very hungry, and he was! baffled as to what the right thing to do is.

Sorry if i have gone off the point slightly. His naps are great, but night time not so great. Are you still feeding overnight?

How long are her naps for? I don't know how we extended his, as they used to only be around 45 mins, but he is fairly consistent now. to be honest i find the daytime feeds are a bit of a struggle to get him to focus long enough.

I am hoping to drop daytime feeds in the next few months as also going back to work, but more desperate to drop night ones first! Any advice/experience welcome! (sorry to hijack...)

Thanks both. Sounds like our original schedule is pretty reasonable and I shouldn't be adding all these additional feeds just to lengthen naps. Any other tips on the nap front as you both seem to have it working pretty well ? DD tends to go for about 30-45 minutes at 9am and at 1pm, but the second nap really should be a lot longer.

Re: nighttime feeding - usually don't do this anymore (I send in DH if she wakes up ), but she is waking up really early in the morning now. This is what caused me to want to address her naps actually - I read that early waking can be due to overtiredness / bad day time sleep (too tired to self-settle). Don't you just love how all these issues are connected and when one thing goes wrong it's like dominoes!

yes it's all connected and hard to know which issue to address first! re daytime naps, because he has never been a fantastic overnight sleeper (never terrible, but has always woken up), I've been pretty rigid about naptimes, but also i think ive been a bit lucky (i think alot of the sleep stuff is just luck), he has responded well to the routine. i do the exact same thing with him every nap. at the first hint of tiredness (or even if there is no hint, it's good to start winding him down), i take him to the couch, read 2 or 3 stories, then take him upstairs, get him in sleeping bag, say the same story to him (i know it off by heart, how sad is that), then sing the same song, pop him in the cot and he goes off to sleep himself. i find if he does wake up it is at the 45 min mark, i.e. one sleep cycle, so i try to avoid noise around his room at that time. i assume you have tried shh'ing and patting back to sleep? does she wake crying or just wake normally? i know if he wakes crying he has not had enough sleep, but very hard to get him to go back. I read somewhere no naps before 9am to avoid early waking. could you stretch to 9.30am?

re over night, i have been sending DH in as well, but last night was all just too much. we will try again tonight. babies are hard work!

Too long to write dts (7 months) routine, and with little spare time as they're about to wake & feed soon. Mine are still feeding around every 3 hours, with pumped milk and food in between. And they wake and feed around every 2-3 hours on a night. A lot of feeds.

Wow madeup, that sounds like you really have nap times cracked! The routine must be very important - our bedtime routine works like a charm but we have nothing like that for naps.

In fact, naps here don't even happen in the cot - which she'll quite happily go in in the evening but not during the day - but in her pram. I have to go for a short walk with her then park her in a quiet spot in the house. But 10-15 minutes later she'll be awake, not crying but chatting loudly to herself.

I will definitely try a slightly later morning nap - that's easy to implement. Hope that helps with the early waking, because not sure how we will extend her lunchtime nap perhaps wait for nursery to sort it out

Now I feel totally crap, DD is nearly 8mo and I haven't the answer to these questions. She sleeps when she looks tired, sometimes once a day sometimes three or four times and often gets woken up just after falling asleep because she is a big fan of falling asleep randomly in the car or when we're just about to go out. She feeds every couple of hours in the day, sometimes a quick suck then another quick suck 10 mins later? She is very fussy about feeding. She eats lunch and dinner when we do, but is often asleep at lunch time which is awkward and I'm not sure if to give her more food when she wakes up then, it's a big pain if we are out at lunchtime especially because I can't share my lunch with her if my lunch was ages ago! Main evening meal is as a family at about 7pm then bed after that at about 8pm. She wakes up crying about every hour until midnight or so when she generally has a long feed until 12.45-1am, then she feeds at about 3.30am, doesn't settle back until well past 5am, when we struggle because it is light outside now, then she gets woken up at 6.30-7am (as do I)

I am already back at work but she doesn't have to go to nursery - god I sound like a shoddy parent looking back at that. I have no idea if she napped this morning, I spent an hour putting her down from 2-3pm this afternoon and she slept less than 30mins......gah

IdaClair, DS3 and I do your routine! I'm SAHM, we just go with the flow.

Sounds like a sensible approach Ida, going with the flow and naps when looking tired .

Hope the nights get better soon!!