Hi ladies

My sis is going through a rough time and she has been given some odd advice from her MCHN so I thought I'd see if anyone on here had any other ideas...

My nephew is 8mths old. At about 3mths, he did the standard "wake up and stop being a newborn" thing and started sleeping a bit worse overnight. Wasn't too bad, sis would feed him back to sleep, he'd be fine.

By 4-5mths old, he had started to resist bf during the day and seemingly as a result was frequently waking for feeds overnight, up to 5 or 6 times. Sis wasn't too concerned with this as she knows most babies need to feed overnight.

At 5mths my sis started him on solids, as his bf had decreased during the day and he was showing signs of readiness. He took to it like a champ and has been loving his solids since.

But now, at 8mths, he basically doesn't feed during the day at all - he will feed when he wakes, around 8am, and then *sometimes* at about 4-5pm and *sometimes* around 6-7pm, but then he crashes - often he's in bed as early as 5.30pm.

He then wakes sometime between 10pm and midnight and then three or four times after that.

My sis and BIL basically haven't slept longer than 2-3hrs since he was 3mths old and are exhausted. My niece, their DD, is often awake at 6am, so they can't even sleep in!

My sis saw her MCHN today and she suggested they cut back on the solids and try and increase the bf, as she thinks the solids are filling his little tummy during the day and he's then having to make up for the lack of BM by feeding at night.

This is going to be hard for my sis because he just isn't interested in feeding during the day. She has tried every trick to try and encourage him to feed - darkened room, lying down, away from distractions, everything - he just finds something else to occupy him - my sister's chain, her bra strap, even the mole on her neck when she basically got naked to try and encourage him to feed.

She knows that BM should be his main source of food. She knows this, so please don't come down too hard on her!

How can she encourage her DS to bf???