Night weaning 8mo

[June628]

Hi, just after some advice/ experiences
My DD is 8mo & EBF. She has dropped all night feeds apart from one at 4:30/5am when she’ll have a short feed & go back to sleep until 6:30. For a while I’ve thought she isn’t hungry for it but is waking up for comfort as she isn’t interested in a 7am feed so I have been wanting to drop it & hoping she will sleep until 6:30. Last night she woke up at5am and didn’t settle whatever I did & my DH took her downstairs at 6 to start the day while I had a little rest before he set off for work. I tried offering water from a sippy cup but she didn’t want it at all.
My question is am I making a problem where there isn’t one by basically now being awake since 5am rather than having the extra sleep or is it possible to get her to drop this last night feed.
Before I could believe she was hungry from 7pm by 5am as that’s a long time but last night I fed her at midnight (never happens but woke up inconsolable!) so I knew she wasn’t hungry at 5am!
I know people advice to send DH in but she isn’t comforted any more by him than she is by me and I couldn’t sleep anyway with her upset in the other room so I’d rather get up and be there through the cries. I feel awful that she was upset but I was comforting her the whole time.
Would be grateful for any success stories!

But she could have been hungry or thirsty. 8 months is early for a baby to not need any milk over night.

Breastfed babies often take up to a year to not need an overnight feed. I'd think only having one early morning feed with the rest dropped is good for an 8 month old. There's also a growth spurt, often at around 8.5 months, so sometimes she might need to feed more often (I know you'd said she'd had one at midnight but usually doesn't) and so sometimes it affects sleep. If possible, I'd feed on demand still. If she's waking early and not having the 7am one, it might just be that she can't go longer than that with an empty stomach, so feeds at 5am-ish but isn't quite hungry enough for another feed two hours later.

If it's really tough and you're knackered, is it possible to try introducing an expressed feed in a bottle for that early morning so DH can do that? I know you say she's not comforted as much/more by him, but maybe that would be different if he was feeding her as she'd be drinking the milk, then resettled.

It's definitely quite early to consider night weaning. Even my one who was ff didn't stop nighttime bottles until 9 months, and it was purely because she wouldn't actually drink them. My bf baby still had night feeds until around 14 months or so.

If a feed works, go for it. It's much, much easier than being up trying to find other ways to get them back to sleep. Babies and toddlers will wake for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with hunger or thirst. My one who night weaned herself at 9 months still didn't sleep through until she was 3.5! My bf one is nearly 3 now and while he does sleep through a lot of nights, I'd say he's still up once or twice maybe 3 nights a week.

Sleeping til 5am is pretty much a full night of sleep though (it's when I used to get up to go to work while still doing night feeds), so if she is sleeping that long and then going back to sleep again with a feed, I'd keep it up because it sounds like you are doing well on sleep.

I still give my 11 month old milk during the night. (He hasn't got any teeth yet, for anyone wondering how we brush his teeth after, by the way). I could probably wean him, but he's definitely waking for milk and not comfort and as it takes only 5 minutes to give him his bottle, that's a lot easier than having him keep waking up or not settling back to sleep because we're only giving water. Lesser of two evils for us!

8 months is very little and if it’s just one feed, I wouldn’t stop. I only night weaned mine between 18 months - 2 years