How to stop 8 month old reverse cycling

[Kathryn3711]

My 8 month old BF baby has never been a brilliant sleeper, but she seems to be getting worse. She’s too distracted during the day to take proper breastfeeds and isn’t yet eating much in the way of solids. But at night she feeds every 2-3 hours between 7pm-6.30am. She has a feed first thing but then will happily go without a feed for 6 hours! She’s maybe getting 2 decent feeds during the day… and umpteen at night. I’m very tired and am finding it hard to be a good mum / wife. I have a 2 year old as well, and just don’t feel I have the bandwidth to be a great mum to her.

I think my 2 year old was similar as a baby, but this time I am far more anxious - most likely because we spent 3 months of our baby’s life (2-5 months) battling her breastfeeding aversion. It was awful! During that time she got most of her calories when sleepy / during the night, so although I don’t think the aversion is creeping back in this time and it’s classic older baby behaviour, the pattern of feeding all night and not feeding much during the day feels familiar and takes me back to that difficult time.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how I can improve the reverse cycling and get her to consume more calories during the day? Or can anyone who’s experienced this tell me when their baby grew out of it? Thank you!

Can you post her full routine? including naps and solids.

@LapinR0se its something like this. Well, this is the aim except she often wont want much milk between the 6.30 and 12.30 feeds. It’s a loose routine as I try to listen to her hungry/tired cues too.

6.30 - wake & milk
7.30 - solids
8.30-9.30 - nap
9.30 - milk
11 - solids
12.30 - milk
12.45-2.45 - nap
3.30 - milk
5.30 - solids
6.30 - milk (feed to sleep)

How is she falling asleep for the naps? And what do the solids generally consist of?

When you say solids, is she having proper meals with you at those times? If she isn’t that interested in milk in the day I’d try and get her to eat more at meal times, eating altogether all having the same food is usually a good way to do this if you aren’t already.

@LapinR0se i used to feed her to sleep but that only works at bedtime now. I usually put her in the pram and rock the pram and she falls asleep in the garden. She naps really well. (It’s been too hot really to nap in the house this summer so a shady spot outside has been our go to!)

@Overthebow in terms of solids, she is quite interested in most things but doesn’t consume much. A lot gets chewed up and then sort of ends up falling out her mouth or thrown. She won’t, at the moment, take anything off a spoon. I tend to do finger food - avocado or peanut butter or cream cheese on toast, fruit and veg, and types of things I feed my toddler like last night was homemade fish fingers and chips. I keep trying yoghurt, handing her a spoon with it on (was such a staple when my toddler was a baby) but she’s not that keen. Because she will only self feed, which in theory I’m fine with, it’s very hard to get much in.

So you have two issues:
Sleep dependencies
Not enough calories in the day

She is making up for the calories at night and also the sleep dependency is getting reinforced at night.

You need to decide which order to do things in, I'd be inclined to stop feeding to sleep first and work on bigger meals in the day.

What would happen if you have solids on waking? When I stopped breastfeeding at 8 months, I just went straight to breakfast and it sharpened my child's appetite.

Is baby still in your room? Is there another parent around who can deal with night wakes?

My DD was a bit like this and it did get better with time.

I would try:

• offering milk after solids at each meal
• feeding in a quiet room as much as possible (hard with a 2yo I know) - DD would get very distracted in noisy environments and not feed well at all.

I think in my case, the extra night taking more solids in the day did help, but like your little one she only likes to self feed so we just had to wait until she was ready.