Bf at night

[molly84]

Hi my 7mo self settles well around 7pm, but still feeds regularly throughout the night, and is widely awake at 5am. He doesn't just comfort feed, he takes a good amount each time then falls straight back to sleep. I am struggling with blw and don't think he's eating much solids at all and gets distracted with feeds during the day. Any advice would be appreciated. I'm exhausted. Thank you x

I've tried breastfeeding in a dark room etc but he won't take much, and I've been persuaded against spoon feeding and persevering with baby led weaning.

Where does he sleep? My baby is 9 months old, and about a month or 6 weeks ago we moved him into his own room because I was feeding him multiple times in the night and was too exhausted to function during the day.

I was very sceptical about the move, because I thought it would mean me having to get up a hundred times in the night, rather than just sliding him across into our bed from his cot. I asked for advice on here though, and was told to try him in his own room.

It's been great, I feed him before bed at about 6.30, and he sleeps until 2.30 when I feed him again, then back to sleep until 6. I think when he wad with us we were disturbing him without realising. If yours is still in with you, it might be worth a try.

Thank you cynara, I have been considering doing this...nursery is all set up so will just go for it. Fingers crossed!

Another vote for the move to his own bedroom. I was exhausted with 6 mo DS feeding every hour while cosleeping. We moved him gradually, first on mattress in our room then mattress in his room but end of night in our bed, etc. now he's on a Montessori floor bed in his bedroom and I just lay next to him once of twice a night to feed him. Brilliant. We have loads of cuddles in the evening and in the morning to compensate says the attachment parent who's trying to compromise

Thanks, good advice x

I posted this in response to another thread, but it's relevant to you:

I have a 10 month old who has never been a great sleeper, but things are dramatically better and I was in your situation months ago where my boy would wake hourly and would scream until I fed him to sleep.

At around 6 months, my boy would feed so much at night, that he hardly fed in the day and would go 8-10 hours in the day without feeding, but want to feed hourly at night. We managed to reverse this - but it took 10 days and a lot of support from my partner but I look back and I think it was the right thing to do as we were so sleep deprived I was crying nearly every day from the misery of severe tiredness and life was miserable. I couldn't enjoy being a mum as I was just simply too tired. Too tired to play with my baby and I spent every second just counting down until the next nap so that I could sleep.

I decided that my aim was to reduce feeding to what would be considered a normal or even generous amount of feeds for a baby of this age (bedtime feed, dream feed around 10pm before I went to bed and one night feed). If baby woke and cried, we cuddled him, comforted him but I only fed him if it had been 3 hours or more since the last feed. Slowly I extended this time period from the 10pm dream feed until the next feed. This required lots of cuddles and our baby did cry, but we comforted him during his cries and he was never alone. We managed to reverse his feeding and he fell into a pattern of dream feed and one night feed - sleeping well in-between. It was bliss in comparison to before.

During these 10 days, it worked much better if I was in another room and my partner tried to comfort him. We chose to start this on a long weekend when my partner was off work, but when he went back to work, I had to do some of the comforting so that he could get better sleep - but by that point we were over the worst and he wasn't waking until about 2 am for a feed.

I should add that my baby had a dummy and this was very useful in helping him to settle as he is one of those babies who gets a lot of comfort from sucking.

Thank you missingcaffeine. There wasn't much change in his feeding with him being in his own room, so I'm considering doing something like you did. I feel exhausted thinking about it, but I know it will be worth it in the longterm x

Hi Molly. Your DS sounds incredibly similar to my 7mo DD. In case you are worried about the crying aspect, an alternative to missingcaffeine's method which I have been working on with my 7mo DD is to gradually reduce the length of time you feed for each time (by 1-2 minutes) until you cut out the feeds completely. As DD was used to feeding regularly at night I didn't want to suddenly reduce her feeds dramatically as she would have been used to having a fair amount of food so would have been hungry and upset. I am now down to feeding her for 2.5 minutes and can put her back in the cot with just a momentary squawk before she falls back to sleep. My next step is to stop feeding completely and settle her in her cot now I know she will not be hungry for what she was used to having. I would say that this method (which is from the No Cry Sleep Solution book) is not the speediest but for us personally was the best solution as we have seen improvement without DD crying much at all. Good luck with whatever method you choose!

You don't have to do BLW if you're funding it hard. I ditched it at 7 months and we got on fine. That Gill Rapley book would have you believe your child will turn into a thick fatty if you don't BLW but it's just nonsense.

Thanks everyone. I've just ordered the no cry sleep solution penguin13 as I am worried about the crying, thanks for the tip. I really want to do blw...but I wonder if some babies don't do well with it. He does seem to want the food, just can't swallow it and gets upset. X