Night feeds

[bluebellaa]

I read somewhere that infants can control the amount of milk they receive when they breastfeed. Does this mean that my 9 month old actually wants the 5-7 full feeds she takes during the night, rather than only nursing for comfort?

Been there! I don't know about milk volume, but at that age it's totally fine to night wean and for us it significantly reducedthe number of wakeups

@DragonbornMum Unfortunately there's no other way she will settle, if I try to do anything other than offer the boob she just starts crying and gets herself really worked up. Dad can't settle her either.

How much does she eat/bf during the day? Ideally you want to get as many calories into in the day as possible and reduce/remove night feeds. I think at that point, I had this schedule:
Bf
Breakfast
Nap
Bf
Lunch
Nap
Bf
Dinner
Supper
Bf
Bed

So I spent all my time during the day getting calories/naps done. But the reward was a full nights sleep...

@TooMinty She will have 7-8 feeds in the day (I usually offer the boob hourly in her last wake window so as to try and fill her up but it makes no difference). She doesn't eat more than a few toddler spoon sized mouthfuls of not very filling foods like fruit, etc.

It's tricky if she's not eating loads - my boys were spoon fed and I prioritised high calorie meals like porridge with full fat milk, pasta with rich cheese sauce etc. But babyled weaning or preference for fruits makes this harder. That many full milk feeds a day sounds like lots though. I think you need to get her to self settle to sleep without a feed then you'd be more comfortable that night feeds are for food rather than comfort.

A 9 month old definitely doesn’t need that many feeds during the night so yeah, is sucking for comfort

id sleep train and night wean at the same time

@TooMinty She has numerous allergies so her diet is very limited, there's nothing high calorie she can eat.

@ShirleyPhallus Sleep training wouldn't be effective.

Then she needs to get virtually all her calories from breast milk so yes that might mean still feeding frequently at night. I can't really think what you can do other than co-sleep or try sleep training to break the feed/sleep association in the hope it reduces wakings a bit.

Why not?

@bluebellaa my DD is the same age and exclusively breast fed. To reduce her night feeds I got dh to do the night wakes for a few days. She quickly learned no boob was coming so slept more. Now we have a single night feed around 4am - this is heaven. We do BLW.

She's in bed for 7pm- wakes for a feed around 4am then back to sleep. Finally wakes between 645-730am.

We haven't sleep trained we just gave her a different person to seek comfort from.