Hi all,
This is my first time posting here. I have a 13 month old boy who is very active and has never slept for particularly long stretches! Until he was almost 6 months old he would feed every 1.5-2 hours only having 2-4ozs. Sometimes we'd get 3-4 hours between feeds. Things started to improve after 6 months, he was crawling and dropped a nap. We also started weaning him and he was waking 2-3 times a night for feeds.
He started walking just before Christmas and despite illness affecting sleep, we were down to one feed in the night.
Currently he has breakfast about an hour after waking then one 6/7oz bottle (half formula half cows) about an hour or 2 after that. Lunch when he wakes from his nap which is hit or miss and may or may not go on the floor. Then he'll have maybe 5oz milk an hour or two later. We offer him dinner but he doesn't tend to eat much unless it's yogurt and fruit. He has a bath then he has his biggest milk feed (still 100% forumla) up to 9oz before bed. He can wake anywhere between 1am and 5am for milk so we change his nappy and offer him milk. Usually he'd go straight back to sleep but for the last two weeks he has been throwing up this one feed. He has had a cough and a cold and I thought that it was because he was coughing that he was bringing up his milk. I'm not so sure now. His cough isn't that bad now and we had two nights in a row last week where he didn't wake at all in the night. I don't begrudge feeding him in the night if he needs it but being thrown up on every single night is breaking me. He is then wide awake because of the upset it causes to him and me (and my husband) and it takes up to 2 hours before he's settled again. We co sleep when needed but he usually does most sleep in his cot. I just don't know if he wants the milk for comfort or if he's genuinely hungry. Sometimes he'll have nearly 8oz but most of it comes up again. We've tried baby rice in milk before bed, having a later dinner, offering water instead of milk for the night feed (that was immediately refused), less milk for the night feed (last night he threw up after only an oz). and resettling other ways before resorting to milk. Only milk works! I don't want to be cruel and have him be hungry in the night but I can't understand why he keeps bringing it back up. As I say, it's starting to take its toll on me mentally with some other stuff that's going on too and I feel like I;m going to break. One night his nappy had leaked, so I changed him, he then threw up and we both needed changing, he then wanted the rest of his milk which he then threw up in my face and we both needed changing again, Has anyone else experienced this? What is the best way to night wean a bottle fed baby - I have read lots on breastfeeding night weaning! Thanks if you made it this far!