Tips to help my son sleep through??!

[mummybear1003]

My son is now 6 months old and has never slept through fully. He is in a very solid routine that stays the same every day.
7am-100ml formula
11am- bowl of food eg carrots/broccoli etc mixed with 30ml formula
1300-120ml ebm
1600- bowl of food again mixed with 30ml formula
1900- 120ml formula and bedtime
2300- feed him 120ml formula as me and his dad go to bed
0300- 120ml formula

This is pretty much the same every single day and he's been having solids quite happily now for 2 weeks. I never offer food or milk before he asks for it (gets fussy, shows signs of wanting it) it just always happens to be at the same sort of time. During the day he tends to nap quite a bit, maybe 2 hours late morning and an hour or so mid to late afternoon, again I have let him lead me on this.
I'm just at a stage where to be honest I need more sleep!! Is there anything I can do to help him drop the 3am feed?

My initial thought is that he's not actually getting that much milk overall.
Maybe try feeding him milk more frequently during the day and he may be less hungry at night?

My baby does sleep through sometimes, and has five feeds. He's EBF so hard to tell how much he's getting in total at each feed but the last feed we give as bottle of expressed milk at 10pm and that will is usually be around 180ml.

KellyMom says the average milk intake for a 7month old is 875ml which seems a lot more than your baby.

My DS is 7 months. His day looks something like this:

7am: 7oz formula (200ml?)
8am: small bowl porridge
8:30 - 10am: sleep
10:30am: 7oz formula
12pm: lunch (half a pouch or finger food with half a yoghurt or fruit)
1:30pm: 7oz formula
1:30 - 3:30: sleep
4pm: 4oz formula if hungry (not always)
5pm: dinner
6:30pm: 7oz bedtime bottle

He reliably sleeps from 6:30pm to 6:30am without a feed, and only wakes once or twice a night for his dummy to be popped back in.

It doesn't look like your DS is having a lot of milk at the moment. Why are you mixing his food with formula? Or have I misinterpreted that? Does he drain his bottles until they are empty? If so, I would offer a larger amount of milk. Also try giving him three naps a day if you can...

I agree with previous posters - sounds like he isn't getting enough calories in the day so is compensating for that at night. DD dropped the 3am feed before 6 months with us just reinserting the dummy (took a good few nights but worked) or you could try offering water. She would then take a bigger feed at 7am. We then started working on the dream feed by cutting down an ounce and moving it earlier by 15 minutes every few days - so over the course of a month or so it moved back closer to 8pm and was only a couple of ounces. Once we had cut it out altogether she slept much better! The important thing is to make up for the calories in the daytime.

Our routine now (at 7 months) looks roughly like this:
6.30 awake
7.00 bottle 8oz
7.30 breakfast
9.00 nap (45 mins to 1 hr)
11.00 bottle 8oz
12.00 lunch
1.00 nap (1 hr to 1 hr 15)
3.00 bottle 8oz
[4.30 possible catnap if other naps have been short]
5.00 or 5.30 dinner
5.30 or 6.00 bottle 8oz
7.00 bed

(We moved the last bottle of the day earlier because she was waking up with burps in the evening, so this seems to allow more time for them to come up.)

I would suggest gradually encouraging your DS to take more in the bottle at each feed. Babies seem to be able to eat more in the late afternoon/ evening so maybe look to increase the breakfast bottle and the last ones.

Hope this helps!

I mix it at the moment because I'm trying to make sure he has more milk! He's always been small (below the 5th percentile) so is on high calorie prescription formula. I have tried feeding him more, even every 2 hours in the past but he's just not interested. He almost never drains his bottles which I always put 150ml in, he just doesn't have a big appetite. When would you suggest his 3rd nap to go in?

Well that's quite important information which would have been helpful in your initial post.

On occasions my DS has a morning nap, power nap around 12pm in buggy if we are out and then goes down again for an hour or so later in the afternoon.

Even though the 3am feed is tiring what your son is doing is very normal.
You can't make him drop it if his hungry and if his tiny his tummy will need filling more often.
Can your husband do the 3am feed a couple of nights a week to give you a full night ?

I think maybe you need to readjust your expectations mummybear1003

While some babies can be sleeping through at 6 months, the fact that your DS is tiny probably is why he needs to eat often and cannot manage without any calories overnight.

For the first few months after weaning you need to maintain the level of milk he was having before weaning. Add solids as extra, not instead of milk.

Remember that fruit and veg are low calorie foods. Your son needs high calories, like his formula, so substituting milk for solids is going to mean he is hungry.

It's not that he 'has' to sleep through now, I just want to make sure the things me and my partner are doing aren't hindering him sleeping through yet. He is actually having the same amount of milk as before I started weening him so I guess that's good.

Night wakings are perfectly normal and healthy for babies and toddlers up to two YEARS of age. Night feeds up until 12 months old are also perfectly normal. I breastfed, and at six months, both of mine were still on a bare minimum of six feeds a night. That's what normal baby behaviour looks like! As Fate says, re-adjust your expectations considerably and that in itself will improve things.

Also - you go to bed at 11pm when you know you'll be up at 3am? Go to bed at least an hour earlier! An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after, as that, as adults is when the deepest part of our sleep cycle is. Get as much sleep in before midnight as you can, and you'll feel much better for it the next day.

I just wanted to reassure you. My 6 months old DD has a similar routine and we are still doing night feeds. I feel your pain in needing more sleep; it's draining sometimes! I always do the night feeds but DH makes sure I have a lay-in every Saturday and Sunday. He will take DD downstairs when she wakes and allow me to sleep in for an extra hour or so (in fact he often moans that I don't lay-in long enough!). This works really well for us. He's a morning person and always has been so doesn't bother him waking early on his days off and the extra hour in bed for me is like pure heaven! Could you try that?

When my DD was first born and having lots of night feeds my midwife told me to have a nap in the early evening (just half an hour around 7pm). Again this helped me loads and made night feeds a bit easy.

My DD is tiny too; 9th percentile. I struggled to get her to take more than 5ozs at any feed (breakfast is often only 2ozs and lunch is 3oz. Always been this way even before we started weaning). I just told myself very early on I need to accept she had a tiny tummy and set myself up for needing to do night feeds for a very long time! I'm not expecting her to drop them befor she's a year. It's really helped me psychology.

I totally feel your need for sleep; its normal! As is your babies routine. Just know when your up doing your feed your not alone! 😀🍼 x

Sounds almost identical to my son, I imagine his size plays a part in it then!