Could a lack of milk stop my 8 month old son sleeping through the night?

[Tracyxx]

Hi Everyone,

I am having a lot of problems with my 8 month old son at the moment with NW, EW, Short Naps and feeding 3hrly throughout the night, but i won't go into great detail about it here or this would be a very long post but if you want to read more you can at:  http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=181139.msg2060471#msg2060471, but today i am here to ask a Bottle Feeding Question.

Kieran has never slept through the night and still feeds 3hrly every night taking 7-8oz around 10.30, 1.30, 4.30 then wakes for the day at 6am and i have been trying to work out why for months and now i am wondering if milk could be the answer.  

Kieran was 10.7lbs at birth and was always a hungry baby drinking 5-6oz every 2hrs from just a few weeks old so i was encouraged to start solids early so his milk intake would drop so since starting solid's at 3.5 months Kierans milk intake has gradually decreased and just lately it was suggested to me he needed more solids to sleep through the night so i have been gradually increasing his solids which has made his milk intake fall even more to 12-16oz a day at most.  It has never worried me until i had a visit last night from my friend and her baby who is 5.5 months old (only 12 weeks younger than K) and she was saying that he isn't eating solids yet but she isn't worried as he is still happy and sleeping through the night but he drinks 5-6 full 8oz bottles a day (approx 40-48oz of milk a day) so she feels solids are not too far off, then i realised there is big difference between Kieran's 3-4 x 4oz bottles a day and his 5-6 x 8oz bottles a day even though Kieran is eating solids aswell, and then i spoke to another friend today who has just started weaning her 4.5 month old son and she said the same that even though he has started eating solids twice a day he is still taking at least 4-5 x 8oz bottles a day and then i started thinking is milk the problem??    

So i looked back at Kierans daily logs for this week and on Saturday he drank 11oz of milk during the day & 21oz through the night, on Sunday he drank 13oz during the day & 21oz through the night but on Friday he drank 21oz during the day and through the night he only took 11oz, so it seems that when he doesn't drink a lot during the day he makes up for it at night!!.  The problem is that he only drank that much on Friday because he had refused breakfast that day so had a few full bottles of milk that day instead of his usual 3/4oz but to test the theory i would need to cut back his solids for a few days so he increases the amount of milk he takes so im thinking of trying it out, but before i do i just wanted to check if not drinking enough milk could really stop him sleeping through the night, so do you think a lack of milk could be the problem?

It would make sense as to why he has never STTN as we where encouraged to drop his milk intake quite early on so he never got to the stage of drinking full 8oz+ bottles, and even now he never takes more than 4oz bottles during the day although he does drink 3 x 7/8oz bottles during the night.

Tracyx  

[Lolly]

I would think the not sleeping through the night is related to him waking to feed so often. He has swapped his day calories for the night - which is probably why isn't taking enough in the day because he is having so much at night. If you look at his intake over 24 hours he is having 30+oz of milk which is more than enough with solids. We cut my DD's night feed at 8 months as she was established on solids and although her milk intake was at the minimum 20oz they need, she really didn't need the night feed any more.

Your young man is capable of drinking 8oz bottles - you just need to get him to take them in the day instead of the night! Are you doing a dreamfeed at 10.30 or is he waking for it? At his age he should be able to go longer than 3 hours between feeds so I think I would push the first nightfeed as long as possible, so after the 10.30 feed I wouldn't feed him until at least 4 hours after that and again 4 hours which should push the feeds to 2.30 and 6.30 which you could then start the day at. You will have some rough nights and he won't like it and you will probably need to use pu/pd (more pd at this age) to try and resettle him.

If you can get the feeds pushed further apart I would then start decreasing the middle feed by 1 or 2 oz every 3 nights so eventually you will be able to stop that feed. This is what we did with DD, she didn't have a DF so we always just fed when she woke. We started dropping the amount in her feed every 3 nights and eventually one night she didn't wake so the next time she woke we just offered water. She wasn't very happy with that but it didn't take long for her to realise it wasn't worth waking for.

So the first thing to do is not to feed before 4 hours from the dreamfeed/10.30 feed and 4 hours after that feed. Then reduce the middle of the nightfeed to eliminate it. I think your DS has learnt to be hungry at night rather than in the day so you need to be strong and teach him to be hungry in the day instead.

What do you think?

Laura

[Tracyxx]

Hi Laura,

Thanks for all the advice i think you are spot on with him needing to swap the calories he has at night back into the day, i did try going cold turkey and just giving him water instead of milk hoping he would wake up hungry in the morning so take more during the day but it didnt work as he didn't increase his daytime calories so was still waking up hungry after a week so i just went back to milk so i think i need to do what you suggest and do it slowly dropping a few ounces at a time.  I don't give him a Dreamfeed he wakes for all his feeds himself, he isn't on a routine through the night as lately he is starting to have the odd 4/5 hour stretches taking his bottle at 7pm and sleeping to 12-1am then starts waking 3hrly so i just feed him when he wakes but it does mean his feeds are at a different times every night, do you think i should just let him feed whenever he wakes as long as its been over 4 hours or do you think i should wake him every 4hrs to feed him to get him on a routine?

Tracyx

[Lolly]

Definitly don't wake him - you want him to go as long as possible between feeds, so if he doesn't wake up then great! Do you ever try to resettle him when he wakes or do you just feed him straight away? So if he has a bottle at 7pm and then 12/1am he really shouldn't need another night feed so if he wakes at 3 hours then make him wait at least until the 4 hour mark before you feed. I would also try very hard to resettle him first any way I could rather than giving the bottle first.

You will have some rough nights while you sort his feeds out and if you can cut his night milk he should make the calories up in the day. If you can give him less then his wake up for the day feed should be better to start the day in the right way.

Laura