Breastfeeding to comfort in night when DS teething and/or poorly with cold

[Notenoughsleep88]

Hello all, I'm sure this is the wrong thing to do but nothing else will console him and after an hour of crying at 4am I'm desperate!
I'm also trying to stop breastfeeding and only BF in the morning, the mid-afternoon, bedtime and midnight feeds are bottles. DS is 7 months old though and I thought that meant he would only need 3 feeds not the 5 he's having at mo (2 BF and 3 x 6oz bottles)?
Any suggestions would be appreciated, many thanks.

Goodness me, at 4am if breast feeding works then do it! 7 months is tiny still, so I wouldn't worry about how many feeds. My youngest is 17 months and some days feeds twice and other days feeds 10 times.

Why are you trying to stop? If there'a no urgency just wait until this bad spell has passed before trying again.

No suggestions sorry, but my 7 month lo currently has 6-8 bf a day. two of them are at night. Last night he must have fed all night but I think it may have been cause he was a bit constipated and needed the feeds to get his bowels moving.
If he is teething or got a cold then I would bf him as much as he wanted. BM will give him what he needs to get better if it's a cold. If he's teething he probably just wants the comfort.

He definitely needs 5 feeds in 24 hours still at 7 months- I think the advice is to reduce number of feeds at 9-10 months, whether formula or breastmilk.

If it works to comfort him at 4am then go for it- it's not forever and teething is miserable.

Other things that might work for teething pain- wet a facecloth and pop it in the freezer for 10 minutes and give it to min to suck on, or freeze some apple/pear/mango slices, wrap them in 2 layers of muslin and let him chew on that. Teething gel and powder are also helpful if you have them handy.

Will get eaten alive for this but a tiny amount of brandy rubbed on the gums helps too.

Hang in there!

Thank you all. Has put my mind at ease.

At 7 months, my daughter was on 3 milk feeds and 3 solid meals a day, but nothing at night. She had a dream feed at 10pm until was about 7 months but this gradually phased out around that time.

Everyone's different and I think that if a baby is 'fully' weaned, ie eating protein, then the milk feeds can start to be shifted around aiming for less reliance on milk by 12 months.

However, she was bottle fed, as I was unsuccessful at breastfeeding, and from what I've read on many forums, a lot of breastfed babies continue to be fed more frequently and at night - whether from comfort or not, I don't know. It just seems to work out this way probably because a breast is much nicer when you're ill than a bottle!

Don't hesitate to soothe a teething baby with a breastfeed - it has an analgesic effect. e.g. pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/4/590.abstract Personally I would rather soothe DD that way than have a reliance on Calpol/ibuprofen etc.