Feeding ALLLL night, EBF & bottle refusal

[beenherebefore9]

Exactly what it says in the title.
EBF 7 month old, co-sleeping & feeding Allll night long.
i know she can connect sleep cycles because she sleeps on her own from 7-9:30/10:00pm but then when I come upstairs to feed and get into bed myself, it's constant comfort feeding. I would say one of the feeds is a genuine hunger feed and the rest are all comfort but I am exhausted.
I go back to work in 4 weeks and have had no luck in getting her to take a bottle either and now I'm starting to spiral. She still feeds semi regularly throughout the day too (4ish feeds) but has been doing well with her weaning.
im so worried she's going to be so sad and deregulated in nursery all day but im at a loss at what else to do if she won't take a bottle??
any advice welcome.

No advice but didn't want to read and run. Been there, done that, got the eye bags. Neither of my sons entertained a bottle so went straight to sippy cups (whether that's right or wrong I don't know!!) Sending sleep x

I EBF and my 7 month old wouldn’t take a bottle. You’ll have sore breasts at work, but you can still BF in the morning and evening.

Have you tried a dummy? If you do, use it as needed, but as soon as they spit it out and stay asleep then take it away, stops the need for older children using them for too long

Hi OP,

4 breast feeds a day doesnt sound very much and their milk should be their primary source of nutrition until they’re 1 years old.

I breastfed both my children and during their waking hours 7am-7.30pm they were still feeding about 7 times at this age, as well as their meals during their day.

Remember that food is just for fun and it is not as calorie heavy as milk, so milk should always be offered regularly and before food when it comes to keeping them full and sustained.

I absolutely understand babies BF for comfort too, but if your daughter is only BF 4 times a day and then comfort feeding all night it may be that not feeling full could be what’s preventing her from falling into a deep sleep and staying asleep, or maybe comfort suckling is her way of trying to stimulate your milk production due to infrequent breastfeeds during the day having an impact on your supply? (nipple stimulation as well as milk removal plays a large role in milk production).

This is of course just a theory / just a suggestion, but maybe increasing her daytime feeds may help?

I went back to work when mine were 9 months old and neither of them took a bottle either, and instead just had water or EBM from a sippy cup.

I also co-slept with mine and this definitely contributed to issues I had with frequent night wakings and although I’m a huge advocate of co-sleeping, it wasn’t until I put them in their own rooms and own cots that there was a huge reduction in night wakings and night feeds.

4 feeds a day doesn’t seem very much? From memory mine was having about 8 at that age. Have you tried any cups as mine took much better to a sippy cup ans straw cup (use the Pipette method to teach straw use). She never took a bottle. Might be easier as she will need some milk during the day at 8 months. Mine went to nursery at 10 months and she managed without any milk but my god did she make it up afterwards

Is dad / other parent around? Could they co-sleep with the baby sometimes? That way baby still get the comfort of co sleeping with a parent but without access to the milk. Other parent can bring them in to you for feeds in the night if needed.

you could perhaps try it one weekend just to see how it goes.

sippy cups are great for bottle refusers.

My advice is to feed more in the day and sleep in a separate room. I was in EBF hell with a bottle refuser until 16 months old. The only thing that broke that habit was that I was ill with sepsis and hospitalised for a week and she DD then had a straw cup before bed. That helped. Also my first was a bottle refuser but from 10 months took a straw cup with formula then weened herself off my breast. It’s hell and the sleep deprivation definitely contributed to how run down I was and how ill I became.

I had this. Your mental health and the health of your baby is the most important thing. Please please know that it is ok to stop…in the long term it doesn’t matter what so ever what type of milk your baby had. They will grow up perfectly healthy without breast milk and nobody cares or thinks about it past the age of 2. Give yourself a break . 7 months is old enough to strat weaning onto food xxx

I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this. A few different thoughts…

1- I agree with previous comments that your baby seems to be “reverse cycling”, ie taking in too much milk overnight instead of during the day. Shifting that (whether gradually or abruptly) will help.

2- Making that shift may require some sort of sleep training to break the BF-sleep association since she’s essentially “learned” that comfort nursing all night is how to sleep.

3- At 7 months, assuming that she’s gaining weight normally, she doesn’t need to BF overnight to be healthy. Obviously it is fairly common for babies still to be doing this but they don’t typically need to in the way newborns do. So you can console yourself that by cutting out some or all night feeds that you’re not hurting her development. You could do something like set a rule for yourself that if it’s been X number of hours since she last BF that you will still offer overnight but otherwise she needs to get back to sleep some other way.

4- I had great luck getting my bottle refusers to drink expressed milk from straw cups around 7-8 months old. It took some effort but they figured it out by the time I was back to work: I think you will be able to help her get there with a straw cup!

5- Your health (mental and physical) matters so much! Do what you need to do for you!

When you say you have had no luck in getting her to take a bottle, is it you trying to give it her?

If so, you will have no chance as she will smell you, and breast milk

You need to be completely out of the house and someone else give it her

If it is others trying then agree try a cup instead

Also more feeds in the day

I have no advice as I'm in the same place but with my 14 month old! Literally feeds every hour and doesn't go off til around 9pm and if I try to settle I a different way screams the house down, if her dad tries to help she gets even worse 😣 . However I just wanted to say that I returned to work 3 days per week in January to a very demanding job and yes I'm tired but you just get used to it and somehow do it! I thought how will I ever survive but somehow I am 😅 x