Will my baby drop night feeds herself or is there some tweaking needed?

[LivBo]

Hi

I'm looking for some advice on whether my LO will drop her nightfeeds on her own or whether there is something I can do to help.

Here is an example of her daily routine, it is by no means rigid.

A 6:15
BF 7:00
S 9:00 (45 min)
BF 10:30
Solids 11:00
S 12:30 (90min-2hrs)
BF 2:30
S 4:30 (30 min)
Solids 5:00
BF: 6:00
S 6:15
DF (FF) 10:00
BF 3:30 (ish)

She falls asleep independently with white noise. If she is over tired I pat her to sleep.

She has been doing the same night feeds for a couple of months now and very rarely wakes up other than to feed at 3ish. She always seems hungry and takes a full feed from both breasts. I imagined that slowly the 3am feed would move towards morning but this doesn't seem to be happening.

Is there something I need to change in her routine to try and encourage a longer stretch at night? Or will she eventually drop the feed herself?

I am happy to continue if I know that she will probably drop it herself in the next couple of months, but I don't want to end up feeding her at night until she is 1 or 2!

Many thanks
Liv

[eva026]

How old is your LO?

Mine dropped her DF at around 10.5mo and her NF a week later, no intervention from me, but I know other moms had to wean the NF.
My DD is pretty small so I was ok feeding her 1x at night as long as she wanted but everyone is different, if the NF becomes a problem it could be time to wean it.

[Erin M]

There's some good info on night feeds here: Night Feeds and the Breast Fed Baby
And like the PP said, how old is your LO?

[LivBo]

Oh yes, sorry, she is 6 months .

Thanks for the link, I will look at it now.

Liv

[Erin M]

You're probably needing to start dropping the cat nap (info here: All about the 3-2 transition- 5/6 months ) and extend some A time (though not by all that much).  Doing that might help your nights -- or it might be that she just still needs the feed.  You could also try to resettle one night without feeding and see how it goes.  I found with mine that I knew pretty quickly if they were hungry!

[*Ali*]

I actually had to wean my two. I think it was partly due to them being quite good sleepers and only waking for feeds so every NW was a BF. so when they woke they just expected it yk?

You could try wake to sleep if her wake ups are always the same time. That might help for the NF and the first nap perhaps.

[LivBo]

Thanks for your responses.

I tried resettling her one night and it clearly wasn't happening. As you said, it was quite clear she was starving! Since then however, I have managed to slightly reduce the time spent breastfeeding. I'm hoping I can slowly reduce the NF this way.

I thought about increasing A time and getting rid of the cat nap, but my daughter has always had very short A times as she seems to need a lot of sleep. As her morning nap is always short (and very unlikely to get longer due to school drop off) I think she is a little way off being able to stay awake between her lunchtime nap and bedtime.

Everything is haywire at the moment anyway because both children have been ill. I'll have to see how the NFs pan out when things settle down again.

Thanks again for your advice.