My DD is 7 months and she started on solids at 5 months but doesn't eat very much at all. Some meals loads and some meals next to nothing. We do a mixture of BLW and spoonfeeding. She still wakes up at least 2 x a night to breastfeed and was feeding every 2 hours in the day time until a month ago. When she was around 6 months she started feeding every 3 hours and then about 2 or 3 weeks ago it changed to every 4 hours and sometimes she will go 5 hours without a breastfeed. This is mainly because she is too busy to feed unless we are in a dark room and she is going down for a nap. If I try to feed her outside these times say in someone else's house where there are things to look at, or in public she will either refuse completely and try and sit up and get off my lap or she'll throw her head back and cry, completely offended I've offered the boob ! OR she'll eagerly latch on and suck for 2 seconds and then pull off and be distracted by something (sometimes even her own hand!) and then if I try and guide her back to the boob she does the dramatic crying again. Sometimes I can tell she really wants to feed (a sign of this is she tries to suck my face, chin, mouth..basically comes at me with an open mouth meaning Mummy I want to feed from you!) Then I offer the boob and it is like she has ADD she cannot stop looking at everything around the room...then when I give up she cries as I know she is hungry but she 'waits' until I take her home and get her into the dark room to take a feed. Obviously I don't want to force her but since this has been happening she has been waking more at night and taking more milk at night (so 20 mins of me trying to stay awake whilst she has both boobs) rather than before she'd have one boob and then flop back to sleep & I'd put her back in her cot and run back to bed. At that point I obviously thought great she is having less milk at night...closer to night weaning maybe. Now night weaning seems like a distant dream......If I try and just feed her with one boob she wakes up an hour later crying for the rest of her feed. But I just can't get her to feed more in the day. I feed her in the dark before every nap (thats only 3 x a day now) and at 7am when she wakes up but sometimes it's even difficult to get her to have this breastfeed as she is too excited to be awake etc she often doesn't drink very much milk at all, even if she was last fed at 4am. Some nights she struggles to go 3 hours without a feed. I'm just really confused. Also she has 6 teeth now - 4 on top and 2 on bottom & she latches on really hard & it's starting to hurt now with the teeth. I also feel a bit resentful that she won't feed much in the day time but then expects more milk at night at a time when I wish I could night wean her.... Just so tired. And she'll be 8 months soon....I just really never expected to still be breastfeeding that much at night at 8 months old....
Is she weaning herself or is it just a phase ? How would I go about night weaning so she'd have more appetite in the day time ? Any advice or experience shared would be most welcome ! Thanks !