co-sleeping, EBF, barely weened 11 month old and not much sleep going on...

[Itslittlek]

Hi there,

I did a post about this a month or so ago and am just coming back for an update and more advice if possible from those who have recently been where we are currently.

Our little one is really not that interested in food still, feeds loads and loads and co-sleeps.

Husband and I have just been talking about a time around the 6 month ish mark that we were putting her down in her own cot and trying to not feed her to sleep but we didnt really see a massive change over a 2 week ish period in terms of her ability to settle herself, she is still an incredibly light sleeper.

The lack of eating...not that I am so so bothered as I am still more than happy to breastfeed on demand and I do believe that its just for fun and experience at the moment, but again, over the time since 6 months when we begun she really has not picked up the pace in terms of sustained interest in food...its more a little nibble, no real passion for it and certainly no volume going in.

Specifically would love to hear from others who are going through, or maybe have just been through this kind of scenario. What does the future look like in terms of self soothing, are we going to have to bite a bullet soon and force her to change?

In the future, I would love it if she would go in her own cot and not rely on feeding to settle so much.

Thanks everyone! x

As shes nearing one id be thinking about reducing breastfeeds tbh

Have you spoken to your hv

No I haven’t actually. Should I?

Food is fun until 1. She's getting close to 1 and showing no signs of improving her eating then I'd be getting worried.
BM alone doesn't have the nutrition she needs.
Sounds harsh but when I went back to work my lo ate more because he had to. I simply wasn't there to feed him. Can you start leaving her for longer periods and maybe she will take more food?
My final tip is small spoons (the tommee tippee ones are too big, try the munchkin ones).

I think once you up the food, the sleep will follow. She will process BM incredibly quickly now.

She is incredibly active, chatty, crawling, confident...she doesn’t appear to be going without anything she needs at all currently. I do plan to bf for as long as she wants too.

Don't get me wrong I still BF. However she really does need to start eating more food.

It was like a magic switch with mine, food intake went up and he slept better.

Yeah I would love to see her enjoying her food more, that’s the main thing. It seems like an inconvenience to her currently.

I am training as a breast feeding councillor and it’s made nothing of in there, in terms of they will ween when ready but I do think you’re right, makes sense that a full belly helps them sleep and she must be burning calories now more than ever before.

Any tips on foods you gave yours? She won’t let you feed her off a spoon which also makes things easy...... haha

Dont think i believe theyll wean when ready as ive encountered 3 and 4 years old who dont eat solids as they are still bf on demand

That’s both incredibly rare and extreme so not very helpful or practical, I would really like this post to be a positive discussion and ideas. We have a baby doing everything she should be doing showing she is very happy and content, it would be to guide her in the right direction and tweak things imo

I don’t have experience of this but my mum exclusively BF my brother untill he was over 3. She is a massive supporter of BF as long as possible and believes in self weaning. Anyway, now I’ve had a DS that I’m feeding we’ve spent quite a while talking about her experiences. My brother was a very keen BF. She said he didn’t really eat solids properly untill about 13/14months. She tried everything.. BLW and just doing purées. She went back to work and left him for longer periods of time. He just wasn’t interested untill he was ready. By 15 months he was sleeping through reliably and was eating loads as well as a good amount of BF when they were together. He as also a very chunky toddler, I remember! So he was clearly getting everything he needs.

I would speak to HV just in case there is any new guidance but a lot of the info these days says not to force the issue and you can’t force her to eat when she doesn’t want to. Breastmilk if full of the good stuff and I’m sure she will be getting what she needs. Is there anything she will eat well?

My son is just shy of 17m.

We cosleep, bf to sleep/on demand and until about 2mths ago he barely ate. He still wakes quite a bit in the night but it's just a case of whipping out the boob and he goes back to sleep.

Eating got better on it's own, I'd been stressed with the whole thing but suddenly he ate. No clue how as nothing had changed. I just continued to offer same foods as before and he obviously decided to go for it one day. I found reducing feeds meant more night wakeup not more food btw so this is something you may wish to bear in mind.

Thanks for that, reassures me!

She does eat the odd thing but like I say it’s more how quick things go on the floor and the lack of actual volume of food. Watermelon and toast are staples!

The only thing I would say is give her a supplement with iron in as that doesn’t really come through in the BM I think?

She does sometimes eat egg which I give purposefully thinking of iron, have any other mums got an iron supplement they recommend? I give her vitamin D

My friends daughter didn’t eat anything but bananas until she was 15 months old. My friend was constantly nagged by well meaning family members and she was constantly worried and upset, but it just changed overnight. She is now 5 years old and eats perfectly!

Advice now is not to unnecessarily supplement with iron, so only do it if your doctor advices you to

My DS is 9 months now and we are pretty much the same with you although his food intake is slowly going up. It’s hard to not be anxious but I think we have to trust our babies to take what they need.
We follow a very child led parenting approach too

Bell - thanks for your comment.

Do you have a link for any info you’ve found to say that? X

Advice now is not to unnecessarily supplement with iron, so only do it if your doctor advices you to

Advice is not to supplement with iron if the baby is getting a varied and balanced diet. If it is not the case, I think it makes sense to have a discussion with a health care professional.

Here are the actual WHO recommendations (page 22):

www.who.int/nutrition/publications/guiding_principles_compfeeding_breastfed.pdf

At 9-11 months of age, for example, the proportion of the Recommended Nutrient Intake that needs to be supplied by complementary foods is 97% for iron, 86% for zinc, 81% for phosphorus, 76% for magnesium, 73% for sodium and 72% for calcium (Dewey, 2001).

I would be giving vitamin drops since your baby does not have a balanced diet. Our health visitors give out bottles.

They will certainly do no harm. I would say the lack if balanced diet at 12 months is unhealthy. I should add the caveat that having a healthy diet and long term breastfeeding are not mutually exclusive.

I’ve left a visit with the health visitor team so will follow this up. Thanks for the suggestion. I have given her vitamin D supplements as that was advertised on the NHS website so I hope this won’t be an issue. Definitely want to get it reviewed. Thanks everyone x

I like this...made me feel better in times when there was no eating going on

Hi, my boy is 10 months and I generally feed/rock to sleep. I bedshare for daytime naps (as I nap at the same time) but is in his cot at night. He wakes regularly at night so needs to BF to settle.

I want to cut this down but not sure he’s ready for this right now since I’ve cut back on his daytime feeds (generally 2-3 whereas it used to be more like 4-5) and developmentally he’s going through a lot right now. I feel I’m the new year once I’m back at work and he’s over a year I’ll feel ready to attempt night weaning, if he’s not reduced his milk feeds by then.

He was very slow to accept solids, which was stressing me out a bit (he was gagging and vomiting on any lumps), but we turned a corner two weeks ago when I started to offer whizzed up home cooked food (including meat) which he’d never tried before. His enthusiasm for food has increased so much. Hasn’t led to improved sleep, unfortunately, though I swear his cheeks are fatter!

My LO (also 11 months, also still BF) didn't take to weaning as well as I had hoped initially but now she's eating 3 good meals a day, a mixture of baby purées/pouches, our food if it is suitable and plenty of finger food she can do herself.

I spoke to a HV when she was about 9 months & said I felt weaning was slow - she advised to stop the BF directly after meals which I was doing to 'top her up' as she felt she was becoming emotionally intelligent enough to wait for the easy, comforting BM rather than go though the effort & strange sensations of eating. I also did a bit of reading on routines on here just to get a bit of guidance & found the Ford one made sense food/milk wise & I have to say things have improved so much now our days look roughly like this, I feel much less anxious now we have a bit of structure to guide us:

6am wake - BF
7am - breakfast
10ish - BF after morning nap
12.00 - lunch
14.30ish - BF after afternoon nap
18.30 BF after bath, downstairs

Basically the timings aren't too important but I am only BFing 4 times during the day now, with decent spacing away from meals after her sleeps & before bed but not feeding to sleep. Water offered throughout the day also. We haven't night weaned yet, I feed her once or twice in the night atm for comfort & to get her back off to sleep quickly. Hoping that will reduce soon, may tackle in the new year. Good luck, hope things improve for you soon x

I forgot to add 5pm dinner in the post above ^^