Hungry at 8 months

[cathylb]

Am after some reassurance - have been a confident breast feeder to my 8 month old. From 8 weeks old he slept from 7pm to 6am. At 4 months he started waking in the night and I started him on solids, thinking he was ready. But he's still doing it... I'm fairly sure it's not hunger as he stuffs himself during the day with solid food and after I've bf him at 4am he doesn't go back to sleep. But everyone I've talked to says "ooh he must be hungry, why don't you give him formula" so even I am started to doubt it now..

Surely it's just habit/comfort/teething? Formula at 11pm wouldn't help with that would it? I don't want to give up bf yet but am getting v sick of being greeted by a wide awake boy at 4am!! He has two naps in the day, 30 mins in the morning and an hour after lunch so should be tired.

Unless you want to add indigestion to the habit/comfort/teething no, it won't help. You are doing great. He will grow out of this. But it may take a while. Try giving neurofen if he seems in pain. Sadly they are notorious for rising at 4am and thinking its 8am. Mine have both done that

It does pass honest

Hi there,

Have a look at our postnatal thread (Jan 09) for reassurance. We all have 8-9 month old babies and an awful lot of them are waking in the night.

I really recommend The Wonder Weeks book for demistifying development spurts etc that can cause night waking. I found it really reassuring to see that most babies go through similar things to mine at roughly the same age. I think I quoted from it somewhere early on in the thread when we were all getting stressed about night waking.

My dd is 9 months next week and went through the night waking stage a few weeks back, I am happy to report she has settled down and is now sleeping through again. There are plenty of other babies on our postnatal thread that are keeping their Mums awake at the moment though.

You're doing fine, trust your own instincts, the world and its mother often seem to feel they know best when it comes to babies, the truth is though that in most cases 'Mother' most definitely knows best.

Just realised our thread doesn't actually say Jan 09 at the moment. It is here. You would be most welcome to join us, we are a friendly bunch and have babies born in December, January and February on the list.