Waking with wet nappy/structure of milk feeds

[ChrisJY]

Hi!  New to the boards, so hope somebody can help us out here! 

DS is now 8 months old and great!  The problem I'm asking about is his fluids intake.  At the moment, he has just 500ml a day.  He has 3 bottles, a large one (approx 200ml) in the morning, half a bottle (about 100-130ml) as a snack, and another approx 200-240ml at bedtime.  The problem is that he often wakes us in the night with a VERY wet nappy!  We change him and he usually goes back to sleep again, but I'm wondering, is his final bottle too great a quantity?  He has porridge before bed too as part of his routine, should we increase the amount we give him, so that he won't want his whole big bottle of formula?

The other idea I had was that maybe his food is "too mushy".  Any ideas anybody?!  I can't find an answer to this anywhere in any books or even on the web (so far anyway!)

Thanks a lot!

Chris

[Freya'sMum]

Hello Chris & welcome to the BW site

I'm going to answer your post in a roundabout sort of way ok? Here at BW we advocate prioritising milk as the primary source of nutrition until 12 months of age, in line with current international guidance. At 8 months, we would be expecting babies to still be having their pre-solids milk intake (this varies from baby to baby) at a minimum of 20oz or 550ml(ish) with solid foods supplementing rather than replacing milk intake. So at 500ml per day, I wouldn't recommend that you decrease your lo's milk intake until he is a year old!

What sort of nappies are you using? If cloth, have you tried adding extra wadding in to increase absorbency? If disposable, have you tried a different brand? We cloth nappy during the day and use a brand name disposable at night because no cloth nappy could last 12 hours overnight for us either!

If you want to start introducing finger foods into ds's diet you can - there is a finger food for young babies thread in the Recipes section of this forum for some ideas - this would help you to move away from mushy food and has a whole heap of other benefits for ds and you too

HTH a bit?

Ax