Trying to decide where to go with my EBF 5.5MO. He’s always gained weight well but we had a lot of problems at the beginning with unsettled behaviour / crying at the breast / tongue ties and reflux. This is now mainly solved but he’s still quite hard to feed sometimes.
I feed on demand which is generally every few hours in the day - or can stretch to 3-4 if we are out or something and then he feeds a lot overnight too maybe 3-4 times.
His feeds are so short so a good feed is 5 mins, very good would be 8 mins and a small feed is 3 minutes. I think he’s quite efficient but I do wonder if it would be better for us all for him to do longer feeds - however he’s just not interested. I also often feed him and he’s very distracted and not feeding properly so I don’t know if I offer it too much.
I’ve been searching some threads and seen a lot of people say “it gets so much easier after 6 months - don’t stop now” kind of thing but I’m just keen to understand how.
He will take a bottle of expressed milk sometimes from my partner - maybe 60% of the time but we’ve stopped trying as the faff of expressing and then wasting milk etc. My partner is wondering whether a bottle of formula before bed would be better and then it’s not such a waste if he doesn’t drink it. I’m not sure if this will help our situation much.
I guess overall I’m wondering:
- does mixed feeding help dad’s be able to soothe and settle babies a bit more? I’m having to handle all bedtimes and night wakings and still can’t really leave the little one for more than an hour or two
- would love to start wearing normal bras etc again but can’t see how this is possible until he’s feeding a bit less or on less of a schedule
- how does it work with night weaning? I don’t want to sleep train but ideally would like to just do a couple of feeds in the night if possible and maybe have his dad settle him sometimes. I’ve heard of some babies not drinking milk through the night at 3 months but then the advice online seems to be more like 12m so bit confused what is “normal” here.
- whats an age to wean them from extended breastfeeding that’s not too traumatic - I would quite like to continue for a while but equally worried about weaning being really traumatic because he’s quite a screamy baby - ie 0-100. Don’t know if this will be easier or harder when he’s older.
Sorry for the ramble.
TLDR - looking for advice and experiences about BF after 6 months to try and decide what to do with my LO and our journey. Thank you