Hoping y’all have some advice for how to best shift the timings of the MOTN feeds for my almost 8 month old, as he’s never hungry in the morning when he wakes for the day. 🤦🏼♀️ I’d rather he fed less at night and then saved up some room for the morning. This has been going on for weeks now. We’ve all had a cold for about a month too so I haven’t had the energy to try to sort this, but we’re better now so can start thinking about doing something. And with the tiredness with the cold my brain isn’t working and I can’t think straight what the best approach would be or what I need the night wake ups to look like and when they should be 🙈
He feeds on average 3 times a night still, and I’m aware this is still normal and I’m not interested in fully night weaning, just adjusting the wake times. This is roughly what happens each night:
7pm bedtime and feed to sleep
10-11 wakes up for a feed
1-2 wakes up and I change his nappy, then feed
4-5 wakes up for a feed
6.30-7.30 wake for the day, offered boob but doesn’t want it!
In between the main wake ups he does also wake up a couple times a night for a quick wriggle and can put himself back to sleep, so self-settling isn’t the problem, before anyone suggests that he can’t get back to sleep without a feed. He can.
He then has a solid breakfast first and often the milk feed not until his first nap of the day at 9.30-10am!
I can sometimes cuddle him back to sleep for an extra hour but all that then does is pushes the feeds just one hour closer to morning and he does always wake pretty exactly an hour later if I do this, so I tend to only try this for one of the wake ups because otherwise we’d be up every hour and I’m too tired for that! And because we cosleep it’s just so easy to pop a boob out and get back to sleep so that’s what I end up doing. My husband sleeps in a different room so he’s not really available to handle the night wakes, the bed wouldn’t fit all of us so unfortunately getting him involved would be pretty complicated.
Not sure what to try? Just suck it up for a few nights and try to settle without feeding until the times I choose? Drop some feeds completely? I already try to make sure he eats well in the day and I think he does. He’s also a refluxy baby so if I try to top him up too often it makes him spit up loads. He’s on Omeprazole for it and it’s helped loads.