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Formula night feeds

2 replies

Morgan68 · 28/05/2024 16:01

Hi all,
Just want to get a bit of advice/hear other people’s experience/stop myself stressing so much.

Sorry this is quite a long post - I wanted to put as much information in as possible.

Background: My DD is 7 months, solely formula fed from birth, currently on 7oz bottles, has started weaning but not that interested so far (we are doing a hybrid of solids and purees - she’s only had little tastes of things so far, not a full meal)

As she has not shown much interest in solids, I have recently started offering her food at breakfast, lunch and dinner so she has a really good opportunity to try things if she wants.

Anyway, very early on DD was sleeping through the night, no concern as she was putting on weight.
From about 5/6 months she has been waking frequently in the night and the only thing that will settle her is milk.
We were giving her full feeds and then spent a week reducing the amount to 2oz in the hope to drop them, or at least the amount of times she was waking. We have since played about with different amounts to see if a bigger feed will keep her fuller for longer, but there doesn’t seem to be a difference.
In the day she has 5/6 bottles, which according to the tin is the right amount (I know babies are different).
An average night can look like this:
19:30 - 7oz bottle
20:00 - alseep
21:00 - wake hungry
23:00 - wake hungry
02:00 - wake hungry
04:00 - wake hungry
06:00 - wake hungry

Sometimes I can settle her at the 21:00/23:00 wake without food. But the other times she screams and screams and the only thing that will settle her is milk. It’s horrible for all of us how unsettled she gets. Some nights she will have a 7oz at 21:00, then 3oz at 23:00, 3oz at 2:00, 3 oz at 4:00 and 7oz at 6:00. And I just think that is way too much. My husband is of the opinion that we do what’s easiest to settle her and that’s milk. Which is fine, but I can’t help and feel that we are doing something wrong.

Anyone have a similar experience and can tell me there’s light at the end of a very tired tunnel?

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Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
teksab · 30/05/2024 00:26

that's a lot of milk at night, and it sounds like she's definitely wanting it for comfort/settling rather than for hunger too.
Have you tried replacing the milk with water at night? Might not be so appealing to her to wake you up to feed her if it's just boring water. And I'd work on trying to replace the milk=sleep association with something else.. will she take a dummy?

Morgan68 · 30/05/2024 07:17

teksab · 30/05/2024 00:26

that's a lot of milk at night, and it sounds like she's definitely wanting it for comfort/settling rather than for hunger too.
Have you tried replacing the milk with water at night? Might not be so appealing to her to wake you up to feed her if it's just boring water. And I'd work on trying to replace the milk=sleep association with something else.. will she take a dummy?

She does take a dummy but will spit it out repeatedly/ push your hands away when she wakes at night

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