BLW and night feeds

[breatheslowly]

I saw a health visitor today (who seemed sane and reasonable). She suggested that if DD wakes in the night that I either not feed her or just give her water as she should be gradually moving away from milk until she is just on 2 milk feeds a day at 1 year. DD is 6.5mo, is formula fed and currently has 4 bottles during the day, a dream feed at 11pm ish and a bottle at some time in the night, though has occassionally slept through until morning. The HV said that since she has occassionally slept through it is evidence that she doesn't need that bottle. As she cosleeps I don't want to have to deal with a noisy baby in the middle of the night and am quite happy to continue to give her milk then and wait for her to drop the feed herself if that is something that happens naturally. I am not sure if she wakes at the moment because she is quite snotty. She also doesn't seem to be eating all that much, but I am not concerned about that except that she should get enough milk/food in total. So, what would you do?

DD is BLW, she is 12mo and is still on 4 milk feeds a day. It is only in the last few weeks that she has dropped from 6 to 4, and she has done so naturally without me enforcing any sort of stoppage on her - she still has a middle of the night feed. If you are happy to feed her in the night, then continue to do so.

Besides I think your HVs logic is flawed, I have gone some nights without sleep in the past but that is not proof that I do not need to sleep at night at all, in the same way that just because your DD has gone some nights without milk, doesn't mean that she doesn't need it most other nights IYSWIM?

I started offering progressively less milk in the night from 6 months e.g. reduced it by an ounce each week until ds stopped waking for it. He was 8 months when he stopped his night feed and still had 4 day feeds by then.

What would I do? Ignore the HV and follow my instincts!

HV seem to be obsessed with getting babies off milk and on to solids as quickly as humanly possible. Which goes against the entire theory behind BLW that milk is all they need until age 1.

Keep doing what you're doing. Offering food, and giving unlimited access to milk. Your LO will gradually eat more, and take less milk. But this is a very gradual process. My DD ate a fair amount from 10mo, but still didn't drop much in the way of milk until 13-14mo.

Excellent - thanks, it is really useful to have other people support our approach. Last night she didn't wake up for milk in the middle of the night, but we will just keep on doing what we have been doing and be prepared for milk if she wants it.

At 6.5m I'd definitely be offering a feed in the night. At around 7m we did start trying to cut DD's wakings in the night because she was waking every 45-90mins and I was becoming insane. She continued to wake for a feed (i.e. DH giving her a cuddle didn't cut it) at 2 and 5 until about 8m then we had a month of waking for feeds only at 10 and 5, then she started needing the 2am feed again at 9m for a couple of weeks. For the last 5 weeks she's been sleeping from about 7:30-6:30. So we think she may have permanently dropped the early morning feed.

I never spoke to my HV about weaning so I missed out on all this advice. If your baby was waking all the time you might want to take action on her needing to feed to sleep, but if she is only waking once a night I'd guess it is probably because she is hungry. We certainly found that once DD's ability to get back to sleep improved she dropped nightfeeds of her own accord.

At 6 months I did start trying to move the 3am feed to 6am, but ds was eating quite well by then. He still has a 10pm dreamfeed at 8 months.