When do I drop off night feeds?

Hello,

DD is 8 months and I've been wondering when to wean off night feeds. Some nights she is still having up to 3 feeds overnight. Her night time routine is roughly feed for a good hour/hour and half before bed (this means I put her down by 8.30/9.30pm or 10pm!!!), 3 hours later have a feed (11.30/12.30), 3 to 4 hours another feed (4.30/5.30) then I give her breakfast.

Recently I've had people comment that she should be going longer overnight between feeds and that she shouldn't need to be fed for that long to get to bed.

My other girls were ff at this stage and they had both started to sleep through or have just one feed.

I always found that the long feed or cluster of feeds before bed was bub's way of stocking up for the night and cutting that short lead to more wakeups.
Are any of her night feeds not serious feeds (i.e. suck for a couple of minutes and fall asleep)? Those may be ones you can substitute with a drink of water and a cuddle.
She may sleep a bit better if you can give her a snack (avocado used to work well for DS) before booby and bed too.
I add this up and get a bub that has 8 hours sleep total overnight - I'm wondering whether she's a bit sleep deprived and hence grumpy and hence wants more booby. But there's no easy solution to that one either....

:hug: Bek, getting up during the night when you have to run around after a toddler and a child during the day must be draining.

FWIW your DD sounds like a completely normal baby. Some babies do sleep through earlier (and that generally is more about the baby than whether they're breast or bottle fed at 8 mths), some take a bit longer. There are ways to encourage settling (have you tried the No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley?), but at 8 mths she may need that extra feed nutritionally. Developmentally she's going through some huge changes.

The other thing you might like to try is fitting in an extra feed in the afternoon/evening and see if that helps her sleep a bit longer.

She will grow out of needing this feed, particularly as she gets older and eats more. But it doesn't mean she won't wake up and need comforting anyway, and in my experience, getting a baby back to sleep with bfing is often quicker than trying to settle them in other ways!

Well after my post last night we didn't get her down until 11pm!! and then she was up every 2 hours..."sigh"

kmn - I've tried cutting her night feed short because she simply will not settle until she is zonked out completely. She might be over tired but I can try for hours to get her down with no success. The same goes for the day time. I've been known the bounce her on the fit ball for over 1 hour in hopes of getting her down lol!!

Her night feeds last from 45mins to 10 mins depending on the night.

I might give her a evening meal a bit later. Currently we are having dinner at 5.30pm. I give her a bf around 4pm then one at 6.30pm, then we start the bed time feed at 7.30pm etc.

Jennifer - She is going through a lot developmentally atm plus she is teething. At the moment she is relying on the breast for settling and I am concerned that she'll need this always. I was hoping for her to learn to settle in other ways so that my DH or MIL could help settle her on occasions. I think I need to read the book you recommended.

I guess my main concern is that I am offering her breast unnecessarily at times when I should be just resettling her.

:hug: hun, while it's exhausting she won't need you there forever. Before you know it you'll wonder when you'll ever get a cuddle!

We wouldn't expect a baby to walk up the stairs when it hasn't even learnt to crawl properly yet. It's no different with emotional development, your baby isn't ready to be on her own all night. All babies develop at different stages, and where some can walk at 10 mths (like my DD) and self-settle at 6 mths, some can take longer. They all do it eventually!

The important thing is how YOU are doing with this and whether you need more support or you need to change things as you're fast wearing down. What's going to make life easier for you while your DD can't sleep through the night on her own?

Hi BecZ,

I remember DS going through a 'stage' at around 8 months where he woke up very frequently and would feed everytime (every 1.5-2 hours for while there). I remember thinking that I must have created a monster by feeding him to sleep and I panicked re how I was going to break the habit.

I tried to resettle once or twice without a feed, yet that was disasterous! It was seriously more pain that it was worth. He actually did drink a decent amount each time he woke, so I figured he actually was thirsty/hungry, so I just went with the flow. He was definitely hitting a massive development phase, so I think it was linked to that.

It did ease after a while and the wakings became less frequent. He still wakes a couple of times at night (he is 12 mths old now), but he usually feeds quickly, then goes straight back down (unless he is sick or teething which means I need to bounce him to sleep on the fit ball).

I did try the Pantly NCSS book and I think it has helped a little bit with the sleep associations - I don't need him to be fully asleep before I can put him to bed now - I still need to help him get drowsy... (unless he is sick or teething, then he needs a bit more soothing).

Hope things get easier for you!