Big Feeds at Night

[osmum]

My DS is nearly 5 months old. I have always had to do night time feeds (two at least) and accepted this as part of him being a baby. I have also been reassured by his early childhood nurse that this is normal, espcially since he came a month early and has been stacking on the weight. I am still breastfeeding.

However, it has now become apparent that he is doing his main feeds at night, feeding at 6pm, midnight, 3 am and 6 am. Sometimes we try to resettle him for a feed and a couple of times recently he has gone without the midnight feed. The problem is he only does small feeds during the day, and is prone to snacking. I try to be strict with the three hourly feeding but sometimes he won't feed at all, or just have a couple of minutes and then go on and off, on and off. I try to eliminate any distractions during the daytime feeds. The advice we have had from Tresillian, GP and early childhood nurse has included: making sure he goes at least 3 hours between feeds during the day so he is hungry for his feeds, try to resettle at night without feeding, introduce rice cereal in the evening feed.

Resettling at night is hard because he is genuinely hungry. We introduced the rice cereal two nights ago and he slept through until 2.30am the first night, however last night he fed at midnight and 3am and did two huge feeds.

I cannot force feed him during the day, he will only eat when he wants to (as I guess is the case with most babies!). He is always really hungry at the 6pm feed and is never satisfied with the breast so we introduced formula at the end of this feed, just before he goes to sleep, about 2 weeks ago and he drinks about 100 to 150 mls. This is also good because it means my husband can settle him and give me a break.

My DS is also a cat napper during the day, something he started when he was 3months old and started to become very active and alert (this is why we went to Tresillian). This also makes the Eat, Activity, Sleep pattern hard because his sleeps are often only 40 minutes long, and he can often only last up for 1.5 hours. This makes balancing the feeds quite tricky.

I would be interested to know if anyone else has had a similar experience. Maybe in a couple of weeks once the feeding of solids is established he will change his main feeding to the day and feed less at night? I have also considered weaning to formula so that I can gauge what he is having during the day better - I am just so tired and frustrated, but I know that going to formula does not guarantee a more settled and 'routined' baby.

Thanks :confused:

[xkwzit]

Hi Osmum
Both my DDs went through a similar stage around 6 months old. My first had always needed a night time feed, but started having two. My second had started to sleep through without a night feed, but then started to wake for one. It is quite normal as babies start to get more interested in their environment, they spend less time feeding during the day and then want to make up for it at night (which may or may not suit you). Unfortunately this extra wakefulness coincided with my returning to work after both babies and so I did not want it to continue.

With DD1, this was the trigger to start her on formula for her 6pm feed, which was her last feed of the night. She was entirely breast fed, but had been on solids for about 2 months at the time. She immediately dropped back to one night feed :D . We gradually substituted breast feeds for formula feeds and I dropped the remaining night feed when she was having as many formula feeds as breast feeds. She did wake for it for a few days, but we could resettle her without resorting to a feed, so she was ready to drop it.

With DD2, we had resorted to formula a bit earlier, as I was having difficulty keeping up with expressing enough milk to feed her while I was at work. But again, once we had swapped half her breast feeds for formula feeds I cut out the night feed and settled her without a feed. Again, this was not a drama as she was ready to drop the feed.

Just one word of warning though, I think that some babies prefer a bottle to the breast (I think mine did once they got to around 6 months old, they can watch telly and whatever else is around while they feed instead of looking at mummy's chest). So if you feel strongly about breast feeding, you might want to try other things first (I have heard of mums who wear a colourful necklace for baby to play with that might encourage them to be more serious about their breast feeds, your local ABA would have stacks more hints).

I hope this helps - they are all individuals. I would expect that this stage should be very temporary as he starts increasing the amount of solids that he's eating. Both my girls were off night feeds at around 7 months (I won't say "sleeping though" because they would often still wake due to teething/lost dummy/being too hot or cold...the list goes on!)

Cheers

[osmum]

Thanks Samantha, its very useful to hear about someone else's experience. I think I will introduce another bottle of formula during the day and combined with the solids hopefully he will become a bit more settled and into some semblance of a routine.
Jo