DS (18 weeks) feeding more at night and decreasing appetite during the day

[smackapacka]

Big Whopping 75thCentile DS who has doubled his birthweight is now waking more at night. He's on a comfort formula due to colicky symptoms - seems to work well for us.

If this was 50 years ago I'm sure I'd be bunging him loads of rusks/baby rice etc in the hope it'd fill him up.

Whilst I don't mind doing a night feed, it's the fact that he is increasing the amount taken and the frequency at night and then not so hungry during the day that bothers me.

I do a dream feed at about 11ish which did previoulsy see him through until about 6am, but last night he woke at 4am and 5am before being up for the day at 7am refusing milk until about 10am.

I'm wondering about trying to give him water instead of milk when he wakes, or maybe do 2 dream feeds???

Grateful for any advice (not keen to try hungry baby milk as we can't even move him back onto normal stage 1 forrmula without him getting tummy ache) (well we think)

hello from the 1950s thread!

you don't say the age of your DS but I was getting nearly 12 hours out of my 7m DS with a dreamfeed at about 11pm. He's 8m now but on a few nights now and then he wakes in the middle of the night and seems to need a feed. Sometimes it's probably not having had enough during the day (unless you're keeping precise track of milk taken and solids delivered, some days a lot more goes on the floor than down the hatch) but sometimes it might just be needing a cuddle.

I tried going back to the 11pm feed before he asked for it, and it sort of worked, but then I forgot and he jsut went straight through 12 hrs again.

The main mistake might be to ever think you've achieved a pattern. The only thing you can rely on is you can't rely on a routine. Or something like that.

Hi Lexi - thanks for response. DS is 18 weeks old. Good advice, will lay off custard for now

Perhaps he didn't wake because he was hungry he just woke up but you offered him food so he had it IYSWIM. I guess I would just not offer food at night at that age if he had been sleeping okay up until then.

Just comfort him and try and ride it out until at least 6am before feeding him milk.

ah, and if you do most of the feeds (bf or ff), he will associate "mummy's smell" with feeding - more literally if BF-ing. So if you are trying to drop a night feed, it might help if the other parent does the soothing. As CarGirl says, he just woke up but then smelled milk so thought yeah I'll have a bit of that!

No he's Formula Fed. I gave him water when he woke up at about 4.30am (and changed his nappy). Felt a bit mean, and he was obviously suprised, whinged quite a bit then fell back to sleep until a very sociable 7.15am. He did have most of his milk then apparently (DH did it) so we're onto something.