Are there any issues with occasionally sleepy feeding my six month old

[BumblebeeG97]

For background, my son was growth restricted and under 5lbs when born at 36 weeks. He is now 6 months and has struggled with feeding/weight gain his whole life. He had undiagnosed silent reflux until 4 months which has been solved by using carobel to thicken his milk. He also had a bottle aversion I think due to the reflux and us pressuring him to eat more (we are still with nutritionist and paediatrician and they really pushed us to get more calories in him). It definitely caused a bit of a feeding complex for me and we followed Rowena Bennetts bottle aversion method to solve his aversion. He previously would only take feeds while sleepy/asleep and now he can take full bottles awake. However, he seems to only really drink well in the evening and early morning. During the day I struggle to get him to take more than 2 or 3oz per bottle. His weight gain has again slowed and he has dipped back below the 2nd centile. I'm thinking about reintroducing sleepy feeds just for a couple of the bottles in the daytime to get some extra calories in him - after offering him the bottle awake and him taking as much as he wants. Rowena Bennetts book is quite against sleepy feeding but I'm just wondering why this could potentially be a bad idea. He doesn't have a sleep to feed association as I have always been able to rock him to sleep within minutes with or without feeding him. Is there any reason I can't think of that this could be an issue? Is it likely to reintroduce his feeding aversion? Has anyone else had to sleepy feed their baby after 6 months and were there any negative effects?

I can’t see why you wouldn’t. Most babies are fed to sleep at least until close to a year. Both mine were (1 breast and 1 bottle fed). I can’t see why it would cause issues long term and I can definitely see it could help with weight gain.

Could there be still some lingering silent reflux my daughter didn't start feeding properly until her reflux was properly managed, she has allergies too and these needed to be resolved too. She was breastfeed rather than formula and didn't feed for more than a minute or two.
She needed high dose omperazole as well as a thickener

I'm not sure if there is any lingering silent reflux. He started dream feeding a lot more smoothly once we used the thickener so I thought it had solved the problem. Were there any other symptoms that were unresolved for you other than the feeding issues? He just feeds so chaotically when he's awake, flapping his arms and legs constantly and popping on/off the bottle which I'm not sure if it's a response to pain or if he naturally is just fidgety

She was generally very unhappy and would pull on and off the breast whilst feeding.She would then scream. She did a lot of back arching too

The bottle aversion, slow weight gain and silent reflux sound like it could be non-ige CMPA. Has this ever been ruled out for him?

Was just going to say this. Mine has non ige CMPA and it does sound a bit similar. Does he have alot of wind and does he seem in pain after a bottle?

No one's ever mentioned it no! He does strain while drinking, sometimes passes wind and sometimes he doesn't. He seems completely fine after bottles though

If you have a read of the article I linked to? Do any of the symptoms sound familiar?