Bedtime bottle

[MamaToAron]

Hi mummas. Just wondering if anyone has experienced this.

My 6mo DS is generally a good feeder now (if you happened to come across one of my earlier threads you’d see we had an absolute nightmare at one point, until we realised it was bottle aversion and managed to overcome it - touch wood). But here is the thing - come nighttime, unless he falls asleep on the bottle, at one point he’ll latch off and start crying so much it breaks my heart. Once calmed down he takes the bottle again - this might repeat a couple of times, or he falls asleep on the bottle.

I am almost certain this happens because he’s really tired. However, this is the same scenario regardless whether he has good naps during the day or not, or if we move forward or push back his bedtime - we’ve tried and nothing seems to make a difference. I say we overcame the aversion because this is the only feed of the day he gets upset and you can tell he’s dead tired. What I’m really after is someone with similar experience who managed to find a solution.

As I mentioned, we have moved his bedtime forward so we now start the bedtime routine around 5.30pm so he gets his dinner between 5.45 and 6 normally. He also has 2-3 naps a day and sleeps around 3 hours during the day (the other day he slept 5 and still the same thing happened..it’s either falling asleep on the bottle or tears).

I’m really not too sure if there’s anything I can do or if I just need to hold on and wait until this phase passes?

Thank you ❤️

My DS did this a couple of months ago! Even though he was quite obviously still hungry, he would unlatch from his bedtime bottle and have a fit if you tried to give it back to him. Eventually after lots of tears, he’d suddenly take the bottle again and finish it. It was very frustrating and made bedtime take double the time it used to, but he’s grown out of it. No idea what it was, maybe he was just overtired (even though there were no issues with his day or night sleep) or just bored of milk and wanted to go to sleep. He’s 8 months old now and we rarely have this problem. If he does get fussy half way through, we have a short 5-10 minute break just to have a cuddle or I’ll walk him round the room talking to him or singing to him, dim the nightlight even more, put him in his sleeping bag and then sit back in the chair, it seems to ‘reset him’ and he then drinks the rest of his milk until he’s genuinely full. Same as you, that last feed of the day was the only problematic one. Thank god that phase is over because it was so stressful!

Omg!! I'm having the same issue!

Literally had a great bedtime routine. Sleepsuit on. Go upstairs and have Last bottle but she grizzles, and have to encourage to take it. Never finishes it like her other bottles. I know she's hungry and not that tired to take it!!!

I'm hoping it's a phase

@PartyPotato thank you!! I’m so glad your little one is over this phase - and also that it’s not just us and there is light at the end of the tunnel haha!

It’s so strange isn’t it? My DS is the same, you can tell he’s still hungry but at the same time he gets really worked up. And again, same, he has no issues with sleep, he sleeps through the night and has pretty good naps as well. And yet, he appears to be so overtired by the time he gets his dinner…but I just can’t possible move his bedtime any earlier, it wouldn’t work for us as a family and it also wouldn’t work with his last nap and daytime bottle.

Fingers crossed we will be past this phase soon as well ☺️

@Hungergames1987 it’s so strange right? How old is your little one? Although my DS seems to be extremely tired, I’m just not too sure why as he sleeps great as I mentioned above…odd little creatures these babies are 🤷‍♀️

How far into your bedtime routine do you give the bottle? Straight before bed? Could you try earlier, so before bath / PJs or whatever else you do? I’ve started giving a bottle 45 mins before bed as advised in the Lucy Wolfe book... I worried it would make my baby wake earlier for a night feed but it has had the opposite effect, if anything. She’s not too tired to take a full feed then and guzzles it. She cries towards end of bedtime routine but now at her PJs being put on instead of at being fed. I’m sure as with everything it’s a phase that will pass though!

@EmmaInParis I’m not sure I can move the bottle so much earlier as he usually has 4 hours between feeds and the gap between his last bottle of the day and bedtime bottle is already less than 3 hours so not sure he would take it…although it wouldn’t hurt to try so I might give it a go ☺️

I’ll definitely try swapping bath and dinner though, we usually have a massage and bath , PJs throughout which he is really calm and then comes dinner which seems to cause all the upset.

Thank you ☺️

Very strange 🤔. She's just over 6 months old. Yes she's seems tired but not more within her norm that she would be at this time of night 🤦🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️ strange how babies change all the time 😂

Normally give what she wants an hour before bedtime, then top up when we go upstairs. As we have done that for at least a month now. And she's not settling like she used to for bed either. Grizzly shouting out and everything. Not overtired. About 2 to 2.5 after her last nap. Tried earlier. Tried later. Makes no difference 🤦🏼‍♀️

I suppose when she grizzles for her 2nd part of her bottle, I could feed her downstairs then go up shortly after.... 🤔🤔 But then may disrupt her even more and be more unsettled ?? As its a change?

@Hungergames1987 story of my life 😂 he used to self settle in 5 minutes, now if he doesn’t fall asleep on the bottle (or if he wakes up when I put him in his bed) it takes quite a lot of convincing for him to go to sleep haha. And all of a sudden he doesn’t look so tired anymore 😂😂

I’m not sure if it would disrupt her routine, but maybe even just walking around with her rather than taking her downstairs help? I’ll try to give my DS a bit of a longer break so he can reset properly as @PartyPotato mentioned. Although he takes the bottle again when he calms down but sometimes he gets upset more than once. Even if it doesn’t work there’s not much to lose.

@MamaToAron I have definitely found that the ‘break’ helps, when he used to get really upset it would give him chance to calm down, but now it’s like he just needs a few minutes to let the milk he has drank go down, then he’s ready for some more.
It was very weird to see your post as I never imagined it would be a normal or common thing, I thought it was just my DS! So reassuring for both of us really.

Thank you 🤗 good luck for you 🤞🤞