Always wakes for df - 7 months

[gwc1023]

I've done a df with my almost 8 month-old dd since she was a few weeks old, which worked well for quite a while - it enabled me to take advantage of her longest stretch of night sleep when I went to bed.  But now she almost always (6 or 7 nights a week) wakes for this feed - I usually try to do the df around 10:30, but she's almost always up about 10:00 crying.  I've been waiting several minutes to see if she will settle on her own, but it's like she knows that feed is coming she's just going to stay up and scream until she gets it.     This has been going on for probably a couple of months.

I think she's probably getting too old for df anyway, but I haven't started cutting it out yet as she's not really into solids, definitely not three full meals a day.  What should I do - move the df back 15 minutes a night to try to phase it out?  Obviously stopping cold turkey won't work for her since she's waking for it already.

Here's her approximate schedule if that helps anything:

7:45 - wake
8:00 - nurse
9:00 - breakfast (like one ice cube size of some kind of fruit with a little cereal)
10:00-11:30  nap
12:00 - nurse
1:30-2:30  nap
3:30 - nurse
4:30-5:15 nap
5:30 - supper (one, maybe two ice cube size of veggies, and some Cheerios)
6:45 - nurse
7:30ish  - bed

She goes to sleep on her own with no paci or anything for all naps and bed.  She has the df around 10/10:30, then normally wakes once in the night, the time varies, sometimes 2:30, sometimes as late as 5.  Thank you for any suggestions!  I didn't do a df with my ds, so I maybe didn't get the same stretches of sleep when he was younger, but at least by this age he slept once he was down at night and I didn't have to feed him again until early morning!

[chell]

Bumping this one, so it does not get lost.

[Jaime]

hi,

though i have no personal experience with this... here's what i've read from other mommies   

a df at 10:30 is pretty late; if she's starting to wake for it, i would definitely start moving it sooner with the plan of eliminating it altogether within the next month.  she's reaching the point where having the dream feed will probably start to disturb her sleep cycles, and she might start waking more at night, as opposed to the sleeping through you've been enjoying.

as far as the solids go... only advice i have is to keep offering them!  some babies just take longer.  we do have a forum on feeding solids; might want to check it out!

HTH 

[teezee]

i would definately cut out the catnap and cut out the df as well.  i stopped giving my lo the catnap just after 6 months.  i would try to extend the A time a little bit (all lo's are different but A time seems really short to me for a lo this age). i know you aren't posting about night wakings per se but you may have them soon b/c of too much daytime sleep - although she seems to be sleeping a good amount of time - three naps is too many at this age IMHO. by extending A time she will sleep better (extend 15 min at a time over a week or so til you find a happy medium) and her naps will be more spread out, not having a need for the catnap.

for the df i would first try moving it to 9:45 and see if that stops the waking. then slowly cut it out ounce by ounce every few days. this will give dd a chance to start making up for the lost calories the next day and won't really affect her by not getting enough as if you were to do this cold turkey. it could be that the df is causing the night waking although it caused several more for my lo after some time. what do you do when she wakes that one time?