Help with hungry 4.5 month old

[MtnBikeChick]

My 4.5 month (20 weeks) baby is big (8.5kgs) and is EBF. He doesn't love the bottle although he will take an oz or two from it. He's slept all night 7-7 from 11 weeks and I found the dream feed never worked with him, unlike DS1. This last 4 days he has started waking at 430am ravenous. This is understandable given his age/size! I am in a quandary as to what to do and don't want to leap to weaning if not yet necessary. Does anyone have any advice? I was thinking of trying to get him to take a decent bottle top up before his bath (his hungriest time of day) or trying a dream feed again at 10pm. Any experience? Thank you!

Totally normal to have a growth spurt at this stage - it does pass fairly quickly. Weaning wouldn't necessarily lead to a longer sleep or feeling less hungry, as there's more calories in milk than in early weaning foods :)

We are experiencing similar - going from no waking to two overnight. I'm just going with it and hoping it phases out. My son is 5 months and similarly sized. He feeds for about 10 mins and then goes back in his cot asleep. I think his waking is also about changes to his sleep cycles.

I've tried giving a top up ebf bottle, but no difference. Bm is digested pretty quickly, so I'm assuming that it won't make much of a difference six hours later. I also wonder whether it might have precipitated an epic 3am poo...

I've not considered introducing food as a method of managing night hunger - I don't see that it will necessarily help things in the short term. I am looking forward to starting though!

It's totally normal. All you need to do is BF on demand. No need for solids or other milk and there's no evidence that these will increase his sleep anyway.

If he is sleeping through till 4am I would just feed him then. If you do the dream feed you risk ending up doing two night feeds if he wakes at 4 anyway.

Totally normal growth spurt.
Just feed, feed and feed some more. On demand.