Advice on stopping night feeds please?

[WhoahThere]

DD is 6 months old today and slept through through the night for the first time last night! So now I know she can do it (she's small and not the greatest eater so I've tended to worry a bit about her getting enough milk) I'm keen to keep it going if at all possible. If she wakes in the night and won't settle back down would it be a good idea to offer water instead of milk? WWYD?

Thanks all.

I agree with StrandedBear - 6mo is still very young.

One night of sleeping through doesn't mean your DD is ready to do it regularly - it means she slept through on one occasion (sorry!). DD would do the occasional full night but didn't sleep through regularly until about 14mo.

Really? Gutted! Never mind, will carry on as normal then - and tell myself that the other girls from my nct group must be lying about their 6mo (in fact slightly younger as DD was the first one born) babies sleeping through!

from 6mo I started thinking that dd in theory could go through the night as she was eating solids and drinking lots of milk in the day. In reality its not that easy! However I did have a routine in place so that I would wake her at 10pmish for a late feed and then try not to feed her again before 5am (unless she was poorly or really screaming!!!)

This actually worked (amazingly) and she slept from 10pm til 5am most nights and eventually I dropped the 10pm feed and the 5am feed by the time she was a year.

Hi, first time posting and so I'll be careful to give advice as I guess every baby is different so I will share my experience.
My DD is now 8 months and she never missed a milk feed until I started weaning at 5 1/2 months and then almost straight away she started sleeping through the night! Now she didn't neccessarily sleep all the way every night but mostly, so once she started sleeping through more often than not then I assumed she didn't need that night feed any more. If she did wake then I simply gave her back dummy, perhaps picked her up and settled her back down again and she would go back to sleep (this took anything from a couple of mins to 20 mins). Almost bang on 6 months we moved her into her own room and from then on she's slept through almost every night.

I would dream feed her at around 10pm, but dropped it once she started taking 3 ounces or less.

I have NCT friends who have tried many ways to get babies to sleep through and I have just looked at how much she eats/drinks to establish whether she is hungry/thirsty or just wanting comfort. How much she drinks/eats usually signals this.

Hope this helps

L x

Hi Whoahthere,

I think to be honest it depends on the baby, if she is ready to sleep through, she will. I have dd twins aged 22 months, dd2 started to sleep through from 7 weeks old, dd1 was over a year old before she started sleeping 7 to 7 and will still sometimes wake up :) The only difference with now and then is at least at this age if she looks for a drink she can hold it herself and stuffs it under her pillow when finished so don't have to be up too long :)

I would give her water if she wakes up. She can go throught the night - she's shown that so why not try to encourage it!? If she was screaming the house down and clearly hungry you could give her some milk anyway. I stopped night feeds same way.

I think a one-off isn't necessarily an indication that she's ready to drop night feeds, and you have a big growth spurt/regression coming up at 8 months so anything you put in place now may all go to pot in 2 months' time.

I am assuming you are bottlefeeding? I'd still have a bottle ready just in case, 6 months is very young. If she goes a week without wanting it, then that's another story.

FWIW DD1 slept through from 10 weeks with a dreamfeed at 10pm. DD2 didn't sleep through until nearly a year. Both were BF, I just went with what they needed - DD2 would wake up at 11.30 and 2.30, guzzle both sides in about 15 minutes and then bomb back to sleep - don't tell me she wasn't hungry. She was a very long, active baby (is now a very tall, skinny active 8YO). I stopped feeding her when she started unlatching and falling asleep when the let-down kicked in and we had her sleeping through within 2 nights from that point.

With your DD so young, I'd let her lead it.

Maybe see what happens over the next few weeks? Our DS slept through most nights for about 2 weeks when he hit 7 months old. We decided to give night weaning a bash and see what happened. I was breast feeding and so sent DH in with water and he rocked him back to sleep. It took 3 nights of grumbling and hes slept through ever since. I was happy to do it as hes a big chap (on 98th centile) and guzzling lots of milk and food (BLW style) and didn't protest much. As others have said 6 months is early but she may be ready, give it a week or so and see whether the sleeping through was a one off? Good luck.

Yes, one night doesn't necessarily indicate anything. My DS slept through 3 nights when he was 3 months, then not again until two one-off sleep throughs at 17 and 18 months. He still can't routinely sleep through the night without one bf (18 months now).

At points, I have tried to reduce DS's night feeds. He stopped feeding so often but woke just as frequently - and was much harder to get back to sleep.

Rice pudding at tea time. Worked for mine.

They really are all different. She'll do it regularly when she is ready. We were lucky that DS did it v early and fairly consistently but many do so later.

I would advocate not going in too quickly at the first little squeak but at the same time don't let her cry till she's apoplectic.

Many people on here will inevitably tell you their 1+ year olds still feed at night. My personal opinion is that this is generally unnecessary but I go back to my first point; they are all different.

Good luck and don't worry that time will come soon enough.

My dd is 5 months and from about 2 months has slept anything from 12 hrs woo! to waking twice for a bottle or a moan,she also went thru a phase of waking at 4.30 for the day
She is my 5th and to be honest i just do what ever i need to do to get her to sleep so we can,so if its a bottle i just do it quick whilst watching re runs of corrie or whatever is on tv and get back to sleep asap,far too stressfull to fight with them in the early hours.

I have just been reading a baby book that suggests babies are often ready to go through the night at less than six months, providing there has been a large split feed at 10/11pm, and breakfast time was at 7am the previous day?