Porridge for dinner??

[redelephant]

I have been blw my dd for a few weeks now (she is just over 6 months old now) and it's going well. My mil looked after her last night while we went out for the evening. She followed her usual routine to the letter except I asked her to give her baby porridge for dinner instead of usual veg etc. because it's the cleanest thing (dd feeds herself with a loaded spoon) and I thought I would spare mil the epic mess that usually happens.

Anyway dd had the best night she's had for ages: only woke once and slept til gone 7... unheard of these days... the only thing that changed was what she ate. Has anyone else found this and should I carry on with porridge for dinner and give her more of a "meal" at lunchtime? I feel like giving porridge for dinner is kind of going backwards but have just given her toast and banana for breakfast which would usually more a lunchtime thing so maybe I could just swap things around? Or perhaps last night was just a coincidence...

I don't give DD porridge but she does like nairns oat biscuits and yes, if I get some of those into her late evening she does go longer overnight. Guess its the oats keeping them going?

We did this for a while when ds was about 7 or 8 months old. Was great, easy to make and very sleepy food. After a while he refused to eat it though and we changed it to pasta or rice dishes.

No problem with porridge for dinner - good healthy stuff.

I have just looked at the packet and it's not even actual porridge. Its a Heinz baby cereal. It has the consistency of "baby porridge" but doesn't contain any oats! Just rice, maize and millet.. I am wondering if last night was just a fluke now. I think I might try and give her some actual real porridge for dinner and see what happens. Perhaps the cereal is just easier to digest and and also fills her up nicely.. it's all trial and error!

I have often given my girl porridge for dinner (baby porridge) if shes teething and fussy about chewing, or if we have miscalculated and shes totally overtired and its just about getting something easy into her tummy before bed. Sometimes mashed a hard boiled egg yolk inot it when she did this a few days in a row. But...she generally eats better now but there was a time this happened quite a lot at ours

I gave DS2 a bottle of hipp night time formula at 10pm which has added baby rice to help with sleep. GF recommends baby rice at 6pm to help with sleep. If it helps with sleep then go for it, you can change meals around a bit later when the sleeping more established. I only needed to use the hipp night time formula for a couple of months.

I used to give ds readybrek or weetabix for dinner when was little (5-7 months-ish).

Thanks for the suggestions... I now don't think she is waking up from hunger. The last three nights I have tried the Heinz cereal, porridge and then last night eggy bread with some baked beans. Nothing has changed. Oh well it must have been a fluke on Saturday night...