When are they ready for weaning?

[fizzbuzz]

DD is 20 weeks old. She has always been a good sleeper, and was going from about 7.30pm-8.00am.

The last 5 or six nights, she has been waking up about 4.00am (lovely)and then never really settling back to sleep, just fussing fidgeting and crying ( she doesn't usually cry much, and never normally at night)

Today after 6th night of this, gave her a bottle about 6.00am. She nearly bit my hand off in her eagerness to get it (desperate is the word).

Is she ready for weaning? She is cutting some teeth, but I don't think they would wake her up at the same time every night.

Am so desperate for sleep......

More likely to be teeth than need for solid food, and once they get into a habit of waking, yes, it can wake them the same time every night. You could try the 'hungry' type formula (e.g. SMA White) to see if that satisfies more.

There is a thread a bit further down that shows that for many babies, introducing solids doesn't help with sleep and for some can make it worse!!

Yes, I've seen that thread, it looks scary!

Could well be teeth - she may be going for the bottle because the sucking eases the teething pain.

Or it may just be she's going through a growth spurt and wakes up hungry - adding in a night feed is a pain when they've been sleeping through but might do the trick, and is much easier than messing about with weaning this early!

if you think how little there tummies are at that age, 12 hours is a long time. If she wants the extra feed, let her have it.

I dont think i could go from 7.30pm till 8am without a drink, i would not expect my 7 month old ds to either.

Is she having a dream feed?

Yes, she does have a dream feed, but has started waking up hungry just before that now. She is currently having 6 or 7 8oz bottles, and sometimes I think she will burst from the amount of fluid she is sucking in!

She sometimes goes into a second bottle as can't fit more than 8oz in bottle. Really hungry all the time.

Agree - more milk will be most likely to help her sleep.

ds started waking more at about 5 months, went to every 2 hours through the night, he was so busy playing in the day, so would then fill up in the night, i think he also worked out that it was nice to get into our bed (still bf).
We now wake him at 10.30 for a feed, then he wakes at about 5 for another feed, he is then ready for his breakfast at about 8am.

I would just go with it for now, solids made no difference to us, we had to break the habit, which we did at about 6 months.

Thanks for help. She had an 8oz bottle at 4.30am hardly woke up for it and went straight back to sleep, AND stayed asleep until 8.00am.

Have you tried giving another feed before you go to be, my son goes to bed at 7.00 and I get him up between 10.30 and 11.00 and give him a feed, he then only wakes up then about 4.00 for a bum change and then sleeps till about 7.00

Yeah she has a dream feed, but she is now waking up hungry before that

It is far easier, and alot less stress full just to go with it and not worry to much.
There is far too many people these days think a baby should sleep 7-7 when they are really young, even a women dh works with naggs him about the fact that ds still has feeds in the night, although i dont know what it has to do with her.