When to drop day feeds when also night weaning a 12 month old?

[LouiseV]

Hi,
I have a thread running on the toddler sleep board as we are working on getting my LO back on track. He has been feeding through the night following a nasty cold and bout of teething (but last night we had our first feed free night in weeks which was great - hard! but great)

When things kinda fell apart I was moving down to just early morning feed and before bed feed, but then the wheels fell off and he started feeding basically all night sometimes, so I re-introduced a morning feed before his nap in case he was thinking that he could get fed at night and not in the day - so he'd really go for it at night (was just a theory!!!)

Anyway, he is now off night feeds and woke at 7 wanting to be fed, but I'm keen to drop that one and the morning nap one (he didnt want it today) to get to just the BT one as he eats so well anyway.

My questions is - am I wise to do this now while we are making changes, and if he's going all night without feeding should I feed him when he wakes (like a reward? he gets fed when mummy is up?) or distract him into eating his breakfast (which he doesnt want after a feed but loves otherwise)

I just want to be so careful as this has been a tough ride and I dont want a simple thing like this to make a difference to our progress!

THanks ladies!

[Erin M]

Is your goal to have him off all his feeds quickly?  It's really up to you at this point -- if it's not causing him that much distress to skip it and you want to be done with it, I'd just skip it (especially the midmorning one if he's refusing it anyway).  If you don't mind, you might stick with the wu one until you get your nights sorts, but really, I'd say it's up to you.  I will say that a positive in keeping it is that you have less cause to think he might be hungry during NWs.  

[LouiseV]

Thanks Erin, yeah that makes sense. I don't mind if he keeps on feeding or not, I just didnt want to confuse the issue!

So if I'm doing a WU feed, then a mid morning and BT - is that a lot for a little boy who eats full meals (except breakfast - he's just had a feed so isnt that hungry - maybe 1/2 cup porridge) plus snacks in between?

I think in my head I wanted to make sure they were hunger feeds and not comfort feeds (if theres a difference!!) as he is SO determined and persistent and if he needs comfort the breast is always the first thing on his mind - which is why I think our nights got so tricky. I was kind of wanting to separate out the two - but after saying all of this I have to say he is still quite young I suppose. Maybe I'm rushing ahead!!!

[Erin M]

Honestly it all sounds fine to me -- with my older girls they only developed a good appetite for breakfast once the morning feed was weaned. 

[LouiseV]

THanks a million - will keep it up :0
(I think we all get so used to feeding feeding feeding our newborns and younger babies that we forget, or at least I do, that they don't need the same kind of fuelling from milk anymore and that they will in fact tell us when they are hungry!)

[Erin M]