Night feeds!?

[CarlyRose80]

How long do you keep feeding in the night. My LO is nearly 11 months old and eats plenty of food in the day, plus morning bottle 6oz maybe 2 smaller ones in the day then a 6oz at bed plus his normal 3 meals sometimes with snacks and he still wakes for a late feed (11pm) and then one in the night and still wakes up at 5.30 for a feed and to start the day. He goes to bed at 7. I just can't get him to sleep all night or later in the morning. If I don't feed him he wines and wines until I eventually go in and offer him milk! Please help. I'm exhausted.

I was quite strict about this - once my DD was eating well during the day (around 6 months) I wanted to teach her that eating was a daytime thing, and nighttime was for sleeping! I bf, so if she woke in the night, I would feed her but literally just for a minute, then would put her back in the cot & leave her. She very quickly stopped waking at all, and started eating more in the day.

My HV recommended sending DP in so she got the message no milk. I was pleased that he would have to go and sort it. But at the same time dreading it because I thought it would go really badly. She was less than impressed when he went in, but actually only took a couple of days and no more getting up in the night.

He just wines and wines until he gets something and it keeps us all awake. It's really hard. I know its habit but he feeds so much its hard to know where to start with cutting it out.

Again HV told me that at that age once eating normal meals they don't need more milk than morning and bed time. So that's what I did. Fine to give more in the day if they want it, but I was breastfeeding and really wanted to cut down.

If I was in your situation I think I would give 11pm feed but then resist in the night. Easier said than some and might take a few painful nights. But once he realises no milk hopefully will stop waking.

Yeah I agree. It's gets to this time and I think do I wake him for a dream feed but then that's encouraging him to want a night feed so I'm leaving him and he will wake when and if he's hungry. I shall have to see how it goes and try cutting each feed down till he hardly has anything or just water. I think it would be to much to just stop it all. Just need to crack the 5.30 wakings and I might feel half human again sometime soon xx

The dream feed is about picking up ds to feed but not waking him, it's instinctive and he will latch on feed and not wake at all. I used it to top up my ds when I was cutting out the night feeds and did it as I went to bed. Good luck :-)

I have 11.5mo DD and just did what you're planning. Over the course of a few months cut her night milk (she was waking every 3 hours in night and wouldn't settle without the bottle, she probably had a good 8oz every night) down to nothing - then offered water instead. When we cut out milk completely there was some crying - we stuck it out (and picked her up and comforted her). A few nights of that and she is now sleeping through most nights.

You could do it quicker of course, but he is still having a lot and the more slowly you do it, the more gentle it is for them (as you rightly say).

Btw I felt like you did about not knowing where to start - would say first step is to gauge how much he currently has. Put a number on it, set that as the upper limit, then work your way down. I would take the bottle out of DD's mouth roughly every ounce. At first she would fuss at 1oz, 2oz, 3oz, 4oz she would settle. Then at 3oz she would settle. And so on. After some success there I would make 1 4oz bottle and say, this has to do til morning. We got to the point where she would settle after one or two sucks. Then switched to water (at that point it was tougher, because she hated the water at first. So we had a while of offering water first, then milk, til she would take the water).

I hope that is encouraging and not discouraging! it sounds ridiculous written down but just set yourself a target every night and then do your beset to get there.

I had this situation - put DD to bed at 7pm and she would wake for feeds every 3 hours or so. I was a broken woman. Decided to tackle it at 6-7 months and I was really pessimistic but amazingly it worked.

I started with the worst overnight feed (was 2am for us) and over a couple of weeks reduced the amount of milk she was getting. I used to bf for overnight feeds so would do it for a minute less each night, but for bottle feeding they say to put a little less in the bottle or to water it down more and more every night. She protested a lot less than I thought she would. Then after 2 weeks I just stopped that feed altogether. She cried for a few minutes for a couple of nights and that was it. It was surprisingly painless. Honestly, when you're used to being woken so often, getting to sleep from 11pm-5am feels amazing

This website was really helpful btw www.troublesometots.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-sleeping-through-the-night-part-3/

The last 2 nights he's managed to go back off around 10/11 without needing a feed but has had a full feed around 1.30/2 then that's it till around 6.30 so seems as if I can drop one feed already just working on the middle night feed but will give it a few more days to make sure he can deff go without the later one before tackling the middle night one. X