11 month old won't eat or sleep

[babyjellyfish]

I wasn't sure whether to post in here or in the sleep section because the two problems are intertwined.

I have an 11 month old breastfed baby who won't take a bottle or a dummy and isn't interested in food, and I work full-time. She has been going to nursery full-time since she was 8 months old. I am the main breadwinner and do not have the option to work part-time.

Since she started at nursery she has been having a small meal at lunchtime consisting of puree, yoghurt, compote and a piece of bread, and usually compote and a biscuit in the afternoon. She generally eats some but not all of what is offered to her. We used to send expressed breast milk but she wouldn't take it from a bottle or a cup so we stopped doing it. She will drink water from a cup.

When she gets home between 5:30 and 6pm she just wants to breastfeed. We sometimes manage to give her some food as well at the same time as her older brother but to be honest she is even less interested in eating when I am around and I don't want to spend our already limited time together hiding in another room in the hope that my husband will be able to convince her to eat something.

When we feed her puree or compote at the weekends she will eat a bit but then start blowing raspberries as soon as she has had enough. If we offer her finger food she will just play with it for a bit and then throw it on the floor. I tend to breastfeed on demand at weekends.

We co-sleep and she is clearly getting most of her calories from breastfeeding through the night, which is exhausting for me with a full-time job. I don't want to starve her but I also can't continue like this indefinitely and I feel that as long as she isn't particularly hungry during the day and is getting what she wants overnight she will have no incentive to eat more food and no chance of sleeping through the night.

I think my first priority needs to be getting her to eat more food and then be more strict about refusing night feeds - which is really hard when she is crying next to me and I'm tired - but then perhaps she won't be hungry enough to eat more food during the day unless I deliberately deprive her overnight first, which feels cruel.

In the longer term I obviously want her to start sleeping through the night as well, although my son didn't start doing that until he was about 18 months old, even after he was completely night weaned, so I am not expecting instant solutions on that front.

Any advice or even just words of moral support would be much appreciated!

This sounds tough. I think as you've said the main thing is to get her feeding less through the night. It will be very hard at first but working full time you need your sleep and she is old enough to be able to stretch out her feeds.

How often do you feed her overnight?
I suggest you switch to just two or three times and at other times try to settle her instead of feed her. Can your partner help out? If you try to settle her she might smell the milk on you and just never settle so it's better if he does all the settling at first. Try to reduce her feeds and stick to him settling her at night instead of you for at least a week to see how she does, and feed her first thing when she wakes up.

How often are you trying to give her solid food? Perhaps try offering it a few more times a day, even if she won't eat it at first. Even a teaspoon as a morning snack so that she gets more used to feeding from food instead of everything from milk.

It's really tough OP and you're in the trenches right now, just wanted to offer some words of support. It will pass eventually and the struggle will be a distant memory.

Could you take some annual leave? Or if you have some time off over Christmas that's a great time to start night weaning.

It is tough and I know it seems cruel but sleep is important for you and her, and soon enough she's really going to be needing nutrients from food - so the bigger picture is that it would not be in her best interest to let this continue even if it feels a bit mean now.

Is she taking a multivitamin and iron supplement?

Thank you for your replies.

@ironorchids Basically I have never counted how many times she feeds overnight. When I had my son I used to track all his feeds on an app. With my daughter I gave up almost immediately because I was so much more tired overnight that I wasn't awake enough to input anything onto the app, if that makes sense. I didn't want to look at my phone and I didn't want to know what time it was or how many times I was waking up. Right now it is particularly bad. If I had to guess I would say she is probably waking up 4 or 5 times per night. I am probably only trying to give her solid food a couple of times per day at weekends and occasionally in the evenings, but evenings are hard because she wants to have a big breastfeed as soon as she gets in, if I don't breastfeed her she will be hungry and grumpy and not in the mood to eat other food, but after I've done it she will be full and not interested in eating other food. My 2 year old also doesn't really eat solid food in the morning. He still has a bottle of milk first thing in the morning and then will usually have a banana or something just before he leaves for nursery. We only have about 45 minutes to get them both up and dressed and out of the house, and we're trying to get my 2 year old to sit on the potty during that time as well, so, very limited time. But maybe we need to find the time to all sit in the kitchen and have a proper breakfast.

My husband is willing to get up during the night but right now the only thing that soothes her is breastfeeding. Perhaps we just need to deal with it and have him go to her rather than me. This will probably involve moving her cot into the spare room and him sleeping in there with her, because if we let her scream in our room she will wake her brother up. I also worry about my husband doing this because although he says he is willing to do it he doesn't cope well with tiredness and is already very irritable so I fear that it could easily end up with both of them crying at once and me having to go in there to feed her until she calms down. And I feel guilty because I see her so little during the day that it feels cruel to refuse to go and comfort her during the night. Perhaps if we at least take turns and I only go in, say, twice a night to start with, I won't be refusing to go and comfort her altogether, just forcing her to find other sources of comfort. It's so hard though.

@luckbealadytonight We have annual leave coming up for Christmas and we will be staying with my parents for a week. I am planning to use this time to introduce her to lots of new food during the day and I think probably the best plan is to not breastfeed her at all during the day, the same as during the week. And when it's us rather than nursery staff who have lots of babies to look after, hopefully we can be more insistent in terms of actually getting her to eat. But what we won't be able to do is let her cry during the night when we are staying with my parents because if she does that she will keep absolutely everyone awake. So in terms of reducing night feeds and letting her cry, we either need to start immediately in the hope of seeing some improvement in the next 10 days before we go away, or we need to postpone that bit until January when we're back home. What would you suggest?

She takes vitamin D supplements which are prescribed by the doctor here - we're not in the UK - but not iron. I probably should look into that. Most babies here are formula fed so it's probably quite rare for a baby to be both EBF and not eating a lot of food at 11 months.

I should probably add that she starts the night in her cot but then comes in with us pretty much the first time she wakes up. I need to start trying harder to put her back into her cot after feeds.