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Infant feeding

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Trying to decide whether to give up BF 6 month son in aid of getting some sleep! Advice please.

27 replies

SalBow · 10/04/2008 11:34

Hello everyone, sorry for the long post. My son is nearly six months old and has never slept for more than 4 hours. This is at the start of the night, from 8ish, then he wakes every two hours or more recently, every hour. Just when I think it can't get any worse, it does! I'm exhausted and something has to change. He is on solids for two meals a day and is gradually starting to take small amounts of formula from a bottle. I started this in the hope of working towards giving him a formula dream feed to help him sleep for longer in the middle of the night. He won't settle without BF every time he wakes up but falls asleep before having a proper feed. It's difficult to keep him awake, and as the night goes on, I get too tired to try. I am co-sleeping, would like him to be in the cot, but having trouble summoning the energy to persist with it at the moment. My HV says I should maybe think about giving up BF as nothing is likely to change unless I do. I'm torn between being desperate for sleep and wanting to continue some BF for lots of reasons. Any ideas / similar experiences would be very welcome.

OP posts:
Jackstini · 21/04/2008 16:18

Not read all thread but just wanted to give you some hope that the 6-7 month mark is definitely when it started to get much easier for me. Once dd was taking solids the feeds gradually got further apart.
We put her to bed a bit later (8pm) with a big feed and she would then only wake once in the night and by 9 months not at all.
All babies are different though. He may not be ctying in the night from hunger - it may be tiredness. dd used to cry for less than a minute then roll over and sleep for another 4 hours if we left her - might be worth a try?
Can you express so dp/dh can give a 'middle of night' bottle.
You have done so well to get this far, hope you can keep going as it really does got easier from now on
btw - your hv is talking bollocks!

katwith3kittens · 21/04/2008 16:22

IMO stopping BF wont necessarily mean the baby will sleep through.

All 3 of mine managed to learn how to do this around 15 months.... I know, I know 15 months seems like a lifetime !! I guess they were just ready for it by then.

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