7 month old nursing ALL NIGHT!

[Littleguggi]

The answer may seem obvious and maybe I'm stuck in a pattern now but my 7 month old daughter just wants to feed all night long (she's mostly breastfed). I don't always keep an eye on the time but sometimes it feels like every hour. In the day she eats 3 meals plus snacks but is definitely more of a grazer. She isn't interested in nursing much throughout the day anymore even though I try my hardest to get her to. At first I thought she was comfort feeding but now I'm starting to wonder whether she actually is hungry in the night. She's never been a great sleeper anyway (up every couple of hours at least) and most often if not always needs to be settled back to sleep via a feed or rocking. How do I break this pattern? I'm tempted to move out for the night to see if she can actually survive without night feeds but this seems drastic! Any feedback welcome!!

She's not starving if she's eating that much in the day. I had stopped all night feeding with both mine by 7 months. Not a stealth boast, it was nerve wracking but I tried it as an experiment giving a dummy instead and they went back to sleep which they wouldn't have done if they were hungry. It was illuminating as to how little they needed at night.

Could you try that? Certainly no need to feed more than twice a night at the very most with that daily intake. You will find she feeds more during the day afterwards too. At the moment she's simply not hungry enough for both BF and solids as she's so full from night feeding.

She doesn't take a dummy and I'm not sure how helpful it would be to introduce one at this age but you're right, she doesn't need to be feeding that much! I must add that she's on the 2nd percentile weight wise and only 13lb 7oz at 7 months. Not sure if that has anything to do with how much she is feeding. I was wondering whether offering her sips of water in the night could be a way forward?

She's pretty much remained on the 2nd percentile since birth, following the growth curve nicely.

Breast milk is still supposed to form the vast majority of their diet at 7 months, and is far more nutritionally valuable than solids at this stage so perhaps she is making up the lack of feeds during the day at night to compensate? I'd drop a meal and snacks to try and save her hunger for the milk rather than her filling up on purée or whatever during the day. My DD is coming up to 7 months and although she really enjoys her food I make sure she is still having more milk than solids, I expect if I gave her that much food she wouldn't be interested in milk at all.

I actually introduced a dummy with my first about the 7 month mark. I needed a different tool at night and it worked. Just because they didn't take it when their tongue thrust was strong doesn't mean they will refuse it at this age - try it!

Thank you silkpyjamasallday..I dropped all snacks yesterday and we had a slight improvement over night with little one feeding at 11pm, 3am and 7am on and off through til 9am. The feeds were longer throughout the day which was good. She was more difficult to settle though after each waking..I wonder why. I gave her water during one feed and that may have upset her.

Thanks ElspethFlashman..I will consider a dummy but at the moment I'm trying to steer away from it if I can. I just don't want another issue arising with trying to take it away from her.