Motivation needed please!!

[againandagain]

Hi
After not breastfeeding for various reasons I was 100% determined to do BLW at 6 months. My DD is 20 weeks and after having 3 months of great sleeping has started waking three times a night for small amounts of milk. She has a little bit then fusses, doesnt let me put her back down untill she is asleep in my arms and the last 2 nights has ended up back in bed with us. My friends babies who are the same age are now having baby rice and purees etc and are sleeping 20 hours straight (okay maybe a slight exaggeration!) After waking up today I look like shite and am fatter than ever and to top it all off the silly Boots parenting magazine has come through containing a pack of.................... baby rice!!

It might not be that she's hungry - babies have (and my DD had) a massive developmental leap around 19 weeks.

My DD who has been a faulous sleeper started waking in the night again, and everyone told me, ooooh, she's hungry, but I stood my ground, also being determined to BLW, and sure enough, one the leap had passed and she started rolling (which seemed somehow to be what was keeping her up at nights, the desire to roll, but not the capability) she went back to sleeping through (12 hours) again.

If you really are determined, I would say, stick this "phase" out and see if it is development linked, not hunger?

Thankyou! Thats what I needed. Funny you should say about rolling. She has rolled front to back but not back to front. Although tonight when she was on her mat and she was trying over and over again and was nearly there. I hope you are right!

Ignore your friends and their perfect babies - trust me, they'll be telling you all the good bits but keeping well quiet about their own anxiety-ridden sleepless nights ...

But anyway, here are 2 bits of info which might hopefully help - learning this really helped me when I had exactly the same problem. (And BTW, my own friends at the time were boasting about their 4 months old on baby rice - very very irritating).

1. What Verity says about development is very true - but it is also really very common for babies of this age to get hungry at night, as they are growing quickly and can't always get everything they need during the day - so often a few days extra night feeds is needed to bridge the gap.

2. But either way, a hungry 20 week old doesn't mean you have to bring forward weaning - it just means they need more milk!

The idea that