'Babies don't need night feeds at 6 months': do we believe this, MN jury?!

[ParanoidAtAllTimes]

I'm EBFing ds (5 months) and planning to do BLW at 26 weeks. He wakes multiple times in the night for feeds so I'm under no illusion that he'll magically sleep through at 6 months. Don't think I have supply problems- good weight gain and content after feeds. So should I try to get him to cut down his night feeds somehow when he's 6 months or will I be denying him vital nutrition?

Oh and I don't think he's having a growth spurt- unless they can last for 7 weeks!

My DS is 9 months and has only very recently started to sleep through without waking for a feed.
At 6 months? not a chance, you will have a v. grumpy baby who won't sleep because he's hungry and miserable.

we believe it, its just our babies that dont, ha ha!!

We night-weaned DS when he was 6.5 months. He had gone from 3-hourly feeds to 2-hourly and then every 90 minutes - it was getting ridiculous and was obviously not hunger, he had just got into the habit that when he stirred in his sleep he couldn't settle again without breastfeeding.

He was never left to CIO though - DH took over all the night stuff, and would cuddle, walk around with and offer water to DS in an attempt to get him to sleep. Took about a week and a half, which was fairly horrible (esp for DH who got screamed at a lot), but after that he slept through until 5am. He became a visibly happier baby for being better rested, and I do think we were able to be better parents for resting properly ourselves.

MrsBoogie, what I would do is not give him any more milk in the night, or water. You have to be firm and consistent. If he has no milk in the night for a few nights there is a very good chance he will start sleeping through (because there is no point in waking - this works for the majority of babies).

When he wakes, go in and give him a shush/pat and say 'it's time for sleep' and then leave the room. He will cry probably, but leave him for a couple of minutes and then go back in and do shush/pat/'time for sleep' again, then leave the room again and leave him for 5 mins this time, then go back in and so on and so forth at intervals of 5, 10, 20 minutes (whatever feels comfortable for you). This could take hours on the first night unfortunately, but it does work (for most DCs).

Don't feel guilty about wanting to have a good night's sleep - you and your DS need it. Good luck.

why in hell would you want a 6mo infant to "learn" that he is not the most important person in the world and that he must consider the needs of others?

a 6mo baby IS the centre of the world, in any healthy family set-up, and rightly so. He can learn about the rights of man later, when he's old enough to process anything more complex than his own needs

"need" is a funny word - it's peculiar that we are looking at what a tiny child "needs" in terms of what he physiologically cannot do without. We don't apply this pitiless subsistence-based attitude to our own "needs" as people.

I don't find it hard to imagine that a very young baby might wake NEEDING to be comforted, cuddled and reassured that his caregiver is near and is aware of him. Feeding is an incredibly powerful physical and symbolic reinforcement of the bond and trust a baby is developing with his mother and therefore with the world around him. The idea that you can "spoil" a baby by answering his instinctive reaching for human closeness/emotional and physical nourishment is bloody weird. IMHO.

Greensleeves - due to my 9mo having woken almost every hour of the night for the past four months my physiological need for sleep hasn't been met and it's taking a major toll on my brain, mood and general ability to care for my child and myself. How does that fit into your picture?

I have no problem in feeding my ds 1-2 times a night, which is all he has had most of the time since about 13 weeks old btw, so he's not waking expecting to be fed, but the hourly waking is soul-destroying.

adults need sleep. babies don't know what they need..they will mistake as needs things that they have always had (eg, fave blanky) merely because they have always had them.

Mrsboogie Another approach I've read about, but not tried, is to gradually reduce the amount of milk in the bottle at each feed, so each night he gets a little less until nothing at all. Might be a little more gentle, or might just prolong the agony, I guess!

my son had night feeds till 16mths old and needed them, imo hes just a baby and we cann all guess how much they need but we dont really know

all babies are different and have different needs

i was happy to feed him till 16mths, hes 17mths now and sleeps right through,

i could never do CC to me it sounds cruel, but then i am a big softie

both my kids were seriously ill as babies, I know how hideaous sleep deprivation is

but I think "cry it out" is lazy and cruel

and if a tiny baby isn't aware of the needs of others and needs to be fed to comfort him and calm him down, that's what he should get to the largest degree possible, and certainly the intention should be to meet those needs, not ignore them until they "go away" (ie the baby realises that nobody is coming)

I think 6 months is arbitrary and clearly all babies are different. However both of mine have been tweaked (not CIO) to sleep through between 7 months and a year.

I think after a year they get much harder to sleep train easily and thats when you either go with it or have to use a controlled crying method that I havent been prepared to do.

IME if you load them up during the day and do a dream feed if needed then its easy enough to cuddle them back to sleep before a year and only takes a couple of nights.

IsItMeOrSanta - not sure from your last few posts whether you are still having the hourly waking or not, but I did try the reduced feeding - i.e. I picked up and fed my DS when he woke crying, but took him off after, say, 5 mins rather than leaving him till we both dozed off as I had done. It did work, not every time but quite a lot of the time he would then go back into his cot and resettle as he'd had enough of a feed to comfort him.

It was around the 9 month mark too that my DS seemed to just start sleeping longer anyway. Now he sleeps through from 7ish to 5/6am for, I'd say, 8 nights out of 10, and I can cope with that.

Glad I stuck it out a bit longer than 6 months and didn't try full-on sleep training then. Having said that, my DS had been waking twice a night and had been tailing down after 6 months-ish to once a night, which I'm aware is quite a different proposition to being woken every hour/90 minutes, so I wouldn't blame anyone in that position for feeling a a bit desperate.

Thanks SleightiesChick - we've just reluctantly resorted to progressive waiting to give DS the opportunity to fall asleep by himself, and it seems to have helped a lot. But it doesn't mean he isn't still waking for feeds 1-2 times per night (which I'm perfectly happy with for now), and of course teething and colds will often upset sleep and leaving them to cry then isn't going to help matters.

It was very reluctantly done, we got the GP to check there was nothing wrong with DS before we started, I am a big softie too but maybe as we are slightly older first time parents our stamina is not that of the others here who I am pleased have been able to continue down the path we startd off on. As DH had been signed off work with exhaustion, something needed to change and we had tried all the pick up/put down and loading up on solids to no effect. DS always woke at dreamfeed time anyway, and was fed then without any impact on his sleep.

It is all very recent, so I suspect I may be sensitive to suggestions that I am lazy and cruel . I try my best like most other parents.

I think this might be my last post on this thread. I only wanted to correct the mistaken suggestion that Ferber said you couldn't use his techniques on a 6mo, and to confirm that he doesn't recommend it for dropping nightfeeds.

Isitme, it is not lazy and cruel - it is easier than getting up x number of times a night, but that does not mean it is lazy or cruel.

My DTs are 19mo now and they go to bed at 7pm, have a chat and play/read, go to sleep then in the morning they chat to each other and play etc until I go into get them. They don't cry in the night unless something is wrong and that to me is healthier than them just crying cos they can't get back to sleep.

Depends what you mean by 'night'. DD dropped her 'night' feed at 3ish by 9 weeks and slept from midnight to 6ish. Good enough for me!!! Pretty sure babies can go for that kind of stretch quite early - the trick is to get them do do that in the night, not in the day. Always amazed at people in baby groups saying how well the baby slept in the day and didn't want feeding... bla bla.. and then in the next sentence complaining that they were up every two hours in the night... Well, go figure!

I wish! my 7.5 month old son is on 3 good meals a day and still needs at least 2 feeds in the night, they also are the longest feeds of the day, so he obviously needs it I have tried all I can to get him to have more milk in the day, with no joy. My 2.5 year dd old still fed in the night till she was one. I am presuming it will be the same with him. Some babies do still need it.

In answer to thread title, this is from my copy of "What To Expect The First Year":

By four months, most babies don't really need to be eating at all during the night. (From a strictly metabolic standpoint, babies can usually go through the night without a feeding once they've reached 11 pounds; whether they will or not is another matter entirely.) If the night-waking habit continues into the fifth or sixth month, you can begin to suspect that your baby is waking not because he needs to eat during the night, but because he's become accustomed to eating during the night; a stomach that's used to being filled at regular intervals around the clock will cry "empty" even when it's full enough to last a lot longer.

CoteDA -does the book provide research references to support what it says ?

This is an interesting discussion - probably wider than the op intended though.

I have not stuck to all the guidelines with my children and they have all been entirely different in their first years - regarding sleeping through and weaning.

Ds1 - bf, frequent waker, follwed 91st %ile throughout in weight, was never interested in solids and took months to get into 3 meals a day. So I continued to feed on demand for as long as it took, frustrated my HV as I had no idea of exact times and frequency of feeds! But as we co-slept I was able to pick up feeding cues and therefore not much crying at night unless ds was ill. We began co-sleeping because we had a bedside cot and one bed flat but we continued because it worked for us.

DD1 - bf very big baby and frequent feeder/ waker at night but easy peasy to wean at 6 months however she continued to feed at night till she was 2 (very infrequent by then), she stopped bf at 2 1/4.

DD2 - bf she is now 13 months and I am feeding her right now - she has 3 meals a day but still bf 3 or 4 times a day and at night especially when teething which she is right now.

I never consider cutting out night feeds till they are in their own rooms at btwn 18 - 24 months - that is the plan for dd2 - I hope that it will work out as it did with the other 2! Dd2 ha never been one to cry much - when she was born she didn't cry causing concern for dh and I at the time - but she just didn't need to (placed straight on my chest and occupied with finding the milk!) - and I have determined to keep it that way by anticipating her needs - largely succesfully,night feeds are part of that process.

To be honest I will miss that night time closeness (though not being used to soothe aching gums!) when it ends in a few months as I can see the end of my breastfeeding years approaching!

I no longer speak to HV about what I should or shouldn't do.

my DS, who was enormous, liked his night feeds until he was weaned. This happened to be when he managed to take solids from DD's plate at 5 months old. He didn't wake up for a night feed EVER AGAIN and after one lovely long night, I weaned him. I know it is in breach of guidance, but I reckon he needed some solid food, and not just a cuddle in the middle of the night.

I know other countries still suggest you wean babies at 14 weeks (guidance when DD was little), and wonder if, like so many things, we take the guidance given to us rather too literally.

Wow, well according to a lot of the posts on here, I am a very selfish mother.

I followed the baby whisperers advice and started to work on dropping night feeds around the 3/4 month mark. I never did controlled crying, but did do the shush / pat technique to establish if DS would go back to sleep without milk. He did and by 5 months, he was having his dreamfeed at 10pm, then slept until 6am.

Once fully weaned at about 7 months, we gradually lessened the amount of milk given at 10pm; and obviously discounting periods of illness, from 7 months onwards, DS has gone from 7pm to about 6.30am without a night feed.

Maybe we were just lucky, but I do think there was an element of us teaching him how to fall asleep without mummys breast.

i actually think breastfeeding is the imporant thing, not EBF, and the evidene for EBF over MF is not v. strong, and certainly not strong enough for me to put up with having my baby waking me through the night for month after month.

but that's for another thread! and already been done to death.

madamlapin you say "I know other countries still suggest you wean babies at 14 weeks (guidance when DD was little), and wonder if, like so many things, we take the guidance given to us rather too literally."

Where to start with this one.... ?

Which other countries suggest you wean babies at 14 weeks? I know of none. Just for starters, US, Aus, Canada, Scandinavia and many others have 6 mths, and this has been in place for years.

It has never been 14 weeks in the UK. I am a geek about the history of infant feeding and guidance about it, and if someone told you '14 weeks' as guidance, they were wrong.

Guidance taken 'too literally'? Guidance in the UK (and elsewhere) makes allowance for individual difference; the UK guidance is taken as a general recommendation, and nowhere is it stated that all babies should fit into it. But based on research, a useful public health recommendation is that on a population level, 6 mths is about right...on health and nutrition grounds. Clearly there will be babies who are fine being weaned a bit earlier or a bit later than this.