Baby wants more milk during the night than during the day

[ADuckNamedSplash]

DD will be 5 months old next week. She understands the difference between night and day, in that she knows 8pm is when she goes to sleep for the night and 8am is when she gets up for the day. When she wakes for feeds in between those times, she falls asleep again quickly once she's done.

The problem is that she wants milk at 3 hour intervals throughout the night (as is the case for most of the day as well) but there's then a long stretch in the morning when she doesn't want any. I.e. the past few days, she's had a bottle around 5 am and not wanted her next one til 10 am or so.

Is this normal? Surely in order to move towards sleeping through, this long stretch should be occurring during the night, rather than during the day? Is there anything I can do to change this?

Ds is nearly 8 months and similar. I offer a 7 oz bottle in the morning and afternoon and he’ll drink mayme 2oz of each one. Then guzzles 12 oz before bed and an 8 oz around 3am.

Is she still in the 4 month development leap? That takes a lot of overnight calories.

My 5 month old breastfeeds a lot during the night. I would say between 7pm (bedtime) and 7am he has about 4 feeds.

When he does wake up in the morning he is very unbothered about feeding and very, very rarely does and I assume it’s because he’s tanked up overnight.

I would say that from his last ‘nighttime feed’ which is usually about 4am there is typically a 4 hour gap until he wants his first daytime feed.

Thanks for the responses - sounds like this is common then! Yes, she is developing a lot at the moment, good point.

Only every 3 hours? Lucky you!
The long stretch will happen when they are developmentally ready and baby sleep is not linear it might well get worse again

Are you sure she wants feeding overnight? I got into a similar rut with my first, she'd wake during the night and the quickest way to get her back to sleep was to feed so I did. Then she'd fill up overnight and need less during the day, viscous cycle. Once I started waiting 10 mins to see if she actually needed a feed or just needed help to go back to sleep we turned it right around. Stroking her face, firmly patting her chest and shhhhing loudly sometimes got her back off without a feed. I must add though that dd wasn't waking screaming for milk, she was just waking and tossing and turning which was annoying her and waking herself up more. Had she been crying for a feed of course I wouldn't deny her.

Just wanted to come back and update for anyone who might stumble across this thread in future...

I discovered this is a 'thing' - it's called reverse cycling. The reasons that babies do it vary - the one that I think applies to DD is that feeds are boring, so having them during the day cuts into time for more exciting things! (Similarly, she won't nap if we're out and about). In any case, we solved it by gradually giving her less milk at night (going from 7oz bottles to 5oz ones), so she had more appetite in the morning. At first it seemed to backfire - she woke more frequently in the night - but within a week, she was sleeping through! Well, in terms of milk, at least - she still wakes for dummies, but that's a separate issue!