Feeding overnight - 13/14 months

[Pipperleen]

Hi everyone, I’m desperate for some advice.

DD, 13.5 months, usually wakes a couple of times overnight. Very occasionally less, sometimes more - last night was 4 times.
She is usually breastfed when she wakes, and seems to have a good feed each time. When she has a good dinner the night before then sometimes she will go through the night, but often not - going through a ‘not eating a huge amount’ phase at the moment, so the night waking is happening without fail. She never feeds to sleep, she always takes what she needs and then sits up - the signal for ‘put me back in to bed now please’. I have tried (albeit not very hard) giving her her dummy back, shushing, etc but she just cries more until she gets the milk she’s asking for.

I keep telling myself I will wean her off it somehow when she is feeling well, the issue is she always seems to have something - cough, cold, sore throat, dodgy tummy - thanks nursery! As soon as one thing is starting to go, the snot comes back with a vengeance!!

So I’m asking for help really - do you think I should try and get her off the breastfeeding even though she seems hungry? If so, how? In my head I know it’s not forever whatever I choose to do, but I’m getting a bit fed up now - I really would like some unbroken sleep at some point.

Many thanks, appreciate you taking the time to read.

You cant begin to think about night weaning until you shift all baby's calories to the daytime.

Two to four good feeds could well equate to one quarter (Or even a third) of baby's calories in 24h. That's a massive amount of calories that "should" be taken in the day being taken at night.

It becomes a self for filling spiral. I'm using made up numbers here, to make the point...
● say she needed 1000 calories on 24h.
● One night she has lots of night feeds and takes 350 calories over night.
● Upon waking, she now only needs 650 calories throughout the day.
● Maybe you get extra calories in her, say 750 calories
● It still leaves a deficit so that the following night baby still needs 250 calories.
● And so night feeds continue...

It is entirely reasonable for a 12m plus year old to be having 100% of their calories during waking hours.

So to get to that you would effectively need to break the cycle by massively upping daytime calories even though baby doesn't need them (due to night feeds the previous night). It'll take some time to establish this, but essentially the more you feed at night, the more you will need to feed at night.

My eldest was like this and we started to give him porridge at bedtime to fill him up!

Thank you both. When she’s not too interested in food, I am sometimes torn between giving her something she definitely likes and giving her something properly nutritious - she’s a bit of a veg dodger at the moment!
I’ll have a think about calorie rich things she can have throughout the day.

My dc had (some of them had 2!) a weetabix before bed...
Night weaned youngest at 9 months as losing my mind with lack of sleep.. And he slept through on the third night!

DC is similar, although not quite 11 months.

He has four big meals a day (with seconds and pudding at nursery) plus 4 breastfeeds (expressed milk if at nursery) and still wakes for 2-4 feeds at night.

I think at least half of these are comfort, but we haven’t found anything that settles him as quickly and he just gets himself hysterical.

He’s a very active baby, walking at 9 months so I do wonder whether he just needs more calories overall, but short of force feeding him, I’m not sure how to get more into him!

I just stopped feeding my almost two year old last week. He didn't so much feed several times a night as just alllll night. We coslept so some nights he'd just be latched on all night.

He has a cup of cows milk before bed now and nothing overnight. If he's done particularly badly with his tea then I'll make sure he has a yoghurt and some fruit afterwards abd something that I know he'll eat just before bed (toast, in his case).

We are going for it - early dinner and pudding, weetabix for supper and cows milk before bed!

Well she ate some dinner, finished her pudding, and then managed half a weetabix and half a cup of milk before bed.
She’s just dropped off after about an hour and a half, some tears but not terrible, and we have stuck to just comforting and patting when we’ve needed to go in.
Fingers crossed for a good sleep.
Wondering what I should do if she does wake - to feed or not to feed, that is the question.

Honestly I found the easiest thing to do was to make the decision we were going to night feed and stick to it. You may have a horrible few days but if you don't feed at night she will naturally start taking more in the day. I also found that moving from feeding to sleep, to rocking, to holding, to putting down awake was a gentle way to teach mine to self settle, basically gradually withdrawing the help given to fall asleep, then when they wake up in the night they can get themselves back off to sleep. Obviously excepting all those times where there are bad dream/illness/too hot/too cold/whatever, which of course you'd never leave them for!

Night WEAN! Not night feed. Literally the most unhelpful autocorrect there!

Whatever you decide, good luck! Once night weaned we had good sleep 85% of the time and it was SOOO worth it, for me and DC as they were also happier for it.

You are right, I just need to not give in. I know she’s had plenty to eat and just need to remember that at 2am!

@Pipperleen

You are right, I just need to not give in. I know she’s had plenty to eat and just need to remember that at 2am!

How's it going, @Pipperleen ?

Hi @Hibiscusroses, thank you for checking in!

Turbulent Xmas season with various nursery based illnesses, so I did keep going for a little bit, and then we had one night where she wouldn’t sleep for hours - and it definitely wasn’t milk she wanted.
From then, I encouraged DH to do the comforting over night if needed and that seems to have worked. We can both get away with a hair stroke and a ‘goodnight’ if she wakes up at the moment.

Who knows how long it will last. I am sure it was initially linked to food - we make sure she has a really good dinner where possible and that does help!