Help - 8-month old still feeding every 3 hours at night

[MotherofDragons82]

My DS is eight months old and on three meals a day.
He doesn't eat a great amount at these meals; perhaps half a Weetabix for breakfast and a few tablespoons of mashed-up food along with some finger food, followed by yoghurt or fruit, at lunch and dinner.

In terms of milk, I'm back at work full time and still bfing morning and through the night. He also has around 5oz of formula at 11am and 3pm ish.

The problem is that, after becoming much better through the night and feeding perhaps at 7pm, 11pm and 5am, he's now gone back to every three hours.
I've tried settling him with cooled boiled water instead, but this makes him furious. The only thing that works is boob.

Perhaps I should just suck it up, but it can take him an hour to feed and settle afterwards, so we're up for half the night. This is really hard now I'm back working full time, and I'm wondering how we should tackle it - and indeed if we should tackle it.

Is there a growth spurt at 8 months that he could be hitting? Or is there another reason he could be feeding so much at night?
I'm struggling a lot, especially as I don't know anyone else with a DC the same age who is still feeding them through the night at all, especially not so regularly.
Please help.

Bumping this as I have a similar problem. 6 month old feeding every 2 hours all night

OP - could be growth spurt/sleep regression/digestion weaning issue or just that you've gone back to work and baby wants the closeness? Is there a lot of dream sucking and only a little milk intake?

Food is just for fun before 1 and all that but I started doing breakfast before milk to get my now 10 mo to eat more solids (did that a while ago).

all what are the daytime feeds like? Bit of reverse cycling perhaps? I also remember this age was a tough time :(

I had the same problem, and the health visitor gave me the best advice I have received since DD was born (she is now 9 months old). I haven't yet completed the process, but we've gone down from 3 long feeds a night to 1 feed (which was 4 minutes long last night so we were up for 10 minutes max). If my plan works she should stop waking between 10.30pm and 7am by the end of the week. The good news is it has only taken 3 weeks to fix this problem (after a couple of months of sleepless nights).

So what to do: Basically you reduce the night feeds slowly so your LO does not have to go cold turkey. Night one you should feed as normal, but time how long each feed lasts. My DD was feeding for 24 minutes each time, so on night two I stopped her at 22 minutes. She cried for a minute or 2 but went to sleep as her belly was full. Night three I stopped her at 20 minutes and so on. She started only waking once when we got down to 10 minutes. From the 10 minute point I reduced the feeds by 1 minute a night, not 2. Tonight I will feed her for 3 minutes when she wakes.

I had tried all sorts of things before trying this plan, and this has been so much easier than I expected. Good luck!