FATEdestiny-advice please!

[Orangedaisy]

I've posted before about DD2 but would be interested to get FATE's views if you have a moment please?

She is 7.5 months, bf, taking well to weaning, if at home naps after being awake 2 hrs and sleeps for about an hour first thing, 2hrs lunchtime and 30-60 minutes early evening. Bedtime is 7 after bath/story/bf, she goes in cot awake for bed and naps and puts herself to sleep after a bit of light whinging. If we are out, as we often are for DD1 nursery run, timings go a bit haywire on naps as she won't sleep in pushchair.

But the issue is nighttime-despite hard work to get her to self settle she has never even close to slept through. She is up about every 2-3 hrs and morning is 5am. I can't let her cry in the night as we're staying with family for a long time, and it breaks my heart anyway. So I feed her at every wake and she goes to sleep again. Any ideas? DD1 didn't sleep through til 2 but I fed her to sleep all the time. Can't face another year+ of this!!! TIA

Forgot to say we don't use a dummy or bottles/expressed milk.

If you are feeding every 2-3 hours through the night, that is a lot of calories being taken in the night.

Baby will only need a finite amount of calories in 24 hours, so if a large proportion are being taken at night, fewer will be needed during the day. This then effects weaning and it becomes a bit of a chicken and egg situation - to reduce night weaning baby needs more daytime calories, but baby is hungry at night due to not enough daytime calories - so which do you tackle first?

You could do it gradually. So set a limit on night feeding. Either an increasing time limit between feeds, whereby you resettle without feeding at any wake-up before your time limit. Or you limit the length/amount of the night feed. For example offer 5 minutes then unlatch and resettle without feeding.

But night feeds are about much more than just calories. Reading your post it seems you don't have an alternate way to settle baby that isn't feeding, which would suggest these are more about comfort than calories.

Before you can expect to not need to feed back to sleep in the night, you need an alternate way to comfort baby back to sleep without feeding. I had a sidecar cot and used a dummy. So I would cuddle up to baby, keep giving dummy in order to stop any crying and cuddle close for reassurance, then extract myself once asleep.

It sounds like you're not using a dummy (?) That means that any settling method you do use is likely to involve some crying. You mention "light whinging" at bedtime, it'll be much less light in the middle of the night. But without the dummy there will be some crying.

So it becomes a case of balancing your priorities. You will get frequent night wakes until night weaned. You cannot night wean without an alternate way to comfort and settle her without feeding, and without a dummy that it likely to involve crying. Maybe a lot of crying, at least initially, and you don't want any crying in the night. So, it becomes a question of deciding which is your priority.

I know all this but have been avoiding it, thanks for telling me in straight terms. Sigh. Have some time just me with both DDs in a couple of weeks. Will try night weaning properly then, but can start with shorter night feeds in the meantime. Thanks for your views.