Changing calorie intake at night - HOW???

[kellyincali]

DS2 is 6 months old (and EBF) and his EASY is pretty non-existant. Why am I posting here? Because I think it stems from not eating regularly. He gets most of his calories at night and then isn't particularly interested in eating during the day. I re-read portions of BW SAYP and there was a story about a girl at the same age with the same problem; Tracy told the parents to just tank her up and then refuse to feed her until wake up time.

So I decided to do just that. Considering he used to sleep a full 7-hour stretch after BT, I knew he could do this.

After failing at it the third night in a row, I'm here. HOW DO I DO THIS?! I talk a big game during the day and psych myself up for it and then the second I'm holding a screaming, hungry baby at 1 in the morning, I cave. Every.single.time. How am I supposed to get my grumpy, exhausted, longing-for-her-bed self to agree with my caffeine-jumped-up day self that this is better for DS2 (and me) in the long run and to just suck it up in the mean time? Or should I be doing something entirely different?

[Shiv52]

{{{{hugs}}}

I would find it too hard to jsut go cold turkey with the NFs!  Plus a BF baby can often still need a NF at 6 months until they are well established on solids.  DO you do a DF?

What I did with DD1 was a bit more gradual and took about 2 weeks overall.  So if she was lasting 3.5 hours in the day I assumed she can last at least that at night.  So the first night I decided not to feed until 4 hours after her last feed.  So DF at 10pm say so I was not feeding until 2am.  If they wake before that you do NOT feed.  You just resettle any way else you can but you do not feed.  Even if it gets to 2am you still do NOT feed.  The aim is to get them back to sleep whatever other way you can.  And you do not feed even if it gets to your time as it would make all the crying for nothing.  When they get back to sleep thats great! If they wake any time after your chosen time just feed and resettle.

I did 2am for the first 3 nights.  First night was horrendous, I will not lie.  Second night bad but not as bad. And third she didn't before 2am.  So 4th night I moved it to 3am for 2 nights then 4am and so on.  By then though she was much much easier to settle without a feed as she was used to it.

Would that help?

[kellyincali]

Thank you for the response, Shiv. I think that your gradual approach is a much better way for me to go about it than cold turkey.

I do usually do one DF, but for the last three days (while trying to eliminate NFs), I've been doing two. DS2 goes down around 6 (this is moved back from 5pm BT that he wanted) and then I DFed at 8pm and 10pm with the intent of waiting until 5:30 the next morning to feed. I've found that he wakes up exactly 3.5 hours after BT for his first feed, so I try to beat him to the punch on that one. Do you think I should continue doing 2 DFs (around 8 and 10) while getting rid of NFs?

As for not feeding even if it gets to the designated time, at what point to I finally feed him? If my designated feed time is 2am, and he wakes at 1am and we've reached 3am and there are no signs of settling... what do I do? Just keep on trucking? I shouldn't feed him until after he falls asleep on his own and wakes later? Or should I DF him when he finally falls asleep? I'm not really expecting this to happen, I just want to be prepared with a plan.

[Shiv52]

If my designated feed time is 2am, and he wakes at 1am and we've reached 3am and there are no signs of settling... what do I do? Just keep on trucking? I shouldn't feed him until after he falls asleep on his own and wakes later?

Just keep on trucking I'm afraid.  And then feed him the next time he wakes straight away.  You will find the first 2 times will be the hardest because its not so much that he is hungry (and he won't be if you feed him at 8 and 10pm) but just that he is used to being fed every time he wakes and he needs to learn  to settlle a diifferent way.  KWIM?

I would keep those two feeds for the meantime.  Are you keeping the 6pm bedtime or would you prefer a later bedtime and laterr wake up in the long term?

[kellyincali]

Well... last night was interesting to say the least. I fed DS at 5:30, then did bath, massage, and pjs as usual.

I did the DFs at 8 and 10 and he woke up at 1:30am, as usual. Then he didn't go back to sleep. Well, that's not entirely correct. I tried doing pat/shh in the crib at first which was ineffective, so I picked him up and did pat/shh on my shoulder and he fell asleep. Every time I tried to put him in the crib to continue pat/shh there, he woke up and freaked out. We did that over and over with a little help from DH and then it was 5am. So we got up for the day. I fed him at 6am and tried desperately to keep him awake, which kind of worked, and then put him in his crib almost all the way asleep... and now an hour later he's still sleeping.

To make a long story short, he doesn't need any feeding at night. I think I'll pop on over to the EASY board since now that we've solved the NF problems, I have to figure out what to do with the rest of our day!

Thank you so much for your help, Shiv!