Reducing night feeds at 7 months

[Sunandstar123]

Hi,

I just wondered if anyone had any tips on reducing night feeds for 7 month old baby. Lost count of how many times little one was breastfeed last night to get back to sleep, which was exhausting! Just to clarify, I am not expecting him to sleep through or cut out all night feeds completely but I’m pretty sure some of them aren’t down to hunger.

When he wakes crying even with cuddles it’s hard to get him to calm down and when he does calm, we put him back in his cot he gets upset again, which is why I end up feeding him back to sleep. He generally naps well in the daytime, either has 2 or 3 naps averaging about 3 hrs per day, and goes to sleep independently for his naps and at bedtime, it’s just the night wakings where he can’t seem to link his sleep cycles.

Thank you.

First of all, a big well done that your baby naps so well in the day and can get himself to sleep independently. That’s great! You have done brilliantly to get to this point with breastfeeding. Secondly, solidarity with you because my baby is eight and a half months old and has always been a tricky little sleeper. I can share with you what I did to reduce night feeds, with the caveat that my little girl does not take a bottle and is still in my room. She sleeps in her own cot but in a sidecar arrangement, so the side is taken off and the cot is pushed up next to the bed. This arrangement is how we coped with the multiple night wakings/night feedings! She was waking on average every two hours overnight but we are now down to two or three feeds per night and I think we will see this reduce further very soon. At this point we will navigate a move to her own room. Anyway, I have digressed!
So, a lovely lady on here shared her approach with me and I adapted it for our situation. Essentially, once our baby was eating two solid meals per day I was confident that she probably wasn’t truly hungry or thirsty at each wake, although like you didn’t want to cut out night feeds completely because I had read a lot about various sleep training methods and knew that actually, waking up to three times until a baby is 12 months (and beyond!) is within the realms of normal (even though still very tough). I didn’t feel comfortable leaving her to cry, although I appreciate that others might be; whatever works for your baby and you. Essentially I told myself that I would not feed my daughter before 10:00, 1:00 and 4:00. This was based on her bedtime feed being between 6:30 and 7:00, and her having had a portion of solid food in the evening. If she woke before 10:00, my husband or I would resettle her by stroking her back or cuddling her (this was easy for us to do lying down due to our sleeping arrangement, but of course you could do it from a chair next to the cot). We did not pick her up but soothed her at all times. I honestly believed she would not give in and would cry until I fed her. The longest it has ever taken to resettle her was 10 minutes and I was AMAZED. That first night she woke around 8:30, was resettled without feeding and then didn’t wake again until 12:30, at which point I fed her (she took a good feed so I believe she does still need to at night) and then reset the clock; so I told myself I wouldn’t feed her again until 3:30. This means that I am expecting her to go at least three hours between feeds at night, which I know she is capable of as she has done so in the daytime. I have seen a huge improvement in the length of time she sleeps at night. I wouldn’t say there is a pattern in the times she does wake, but the frequency has definitely reduced and I now have the freedom to go out in the evening with friends and know that she can be resettled without me feeding her. I know this is a super long reply so please let me know if you have any specific questions. Good luck, it will get better although from experience I know that is hugely frustrating to hear when you are in the thick of it.

Here is the link to my own thread with some useful advice from others!

Hi there, firstly thank you so much for taking the time to write such a comprehensive response, I really appreciate it!

That is great that this has worked so well for you and I will definitely be giving this a go and read through the thread that you posted. It’s amazing it only took 10 minutes the first time round. Did you speak to her at all or keep it really quiet?

We are just in the process of increasing to two meals a day which is why I also thought now is a good time as I can be a bit more sure it’s not hunger at every waking/feed!

Good luck with the move to own room, we found this actually helped in some ways. Our little one was waking most nights at the exact time we went to bed, even at different times of days, so we figured we were disturbing him at times, no matter how quiet we tried to be!

Thanks again x

No problem, it really helped me to know that I was not alone, so hopefully this also helps you. Although at times it felt like we were the only parents with a baby that STILL woke at night! I am writing this having just resettled our little girl without feeding her. It took five minutes. Such progress for us!
We do lots of shhh-ing and rubbing her back when she wakes. Not speaking to her exactly, but letting her know we are there. Some things I read said that this is too stimulating at night, but I can tell our daughter is just very tired and wants to go back to sleep, she just didn’t seem to know how to do it herself until recently.
So, she did cry and it was hard not to ‘give in’. But over time her crying has definitely become more ‘winding down’ than ‘winding up’. Even one month ago this was unthinkable for us, so even if you try it and it doesn’t work, don’t be disheartened and maybe try again in a week. If we keep moving in this direction I’ll stretch it to four hours in between feeds at night and then five, and so on.
Something else that coincided with this is that our baby stopped feeding to sleep. So she would feed just before bedtime, but come off the breast of her own accord and still be awake. Most other nights before this she had fed all the way to sleep and this was another thing that I thought would never change! This might not be an issue for you anyway but thought I would mention. Sitting independently also happened around the same time. I guess all of their little developmental milestones can affect their sleep too. I just decided that it was now better for our baby to be able to be settled at night in other ways than just a feed (which of course would still be totally normal and okay, if I was happy with it) for her own sake as well as mine. This helped me to reframe it from “Oh, I can’t cope with the frequent wakes, I need to fix it” to “My baby doesn’t need to feed every two hours, it’s better for her that she can get back to sleep without it”.
You’re doing brilliantly, it’s so hard to cope with long-term broken sleep.