8 mth old - 2 night feedings still??

[Jemimah]

Back again.  DS2 is spirited and used to nap like crap.  Now we get 2 decent naps of exactly 1 hr 15 min.  YA for me.  This is so much better than the 30 min naps from before.  He can stay up 3.15 min in the day, and 3.30min before bed.  He goes to bet easy enough.  On a good night  he will go 5-7 hrs before feeding, BUT that is with a lot of resettling effort as his NW are something like this:7, 9.30, 11, 12, 3.30, 5, 6   I usually feed between 10.30-12.30 and sometimes again around 3-5.30.  Sometimes he can go through with just one NF, but that is exhausting for me, as I am constantly trying to resettle.  He takes a soother, but spits it out once asleep.  Can someone see if they can spot why the night wakings??  Is it developmental?  My DS1 was almost sleeping through the night at this point.  What gives?  Should I be always resettling and not offering 2 NF?  Do other 8 mths old still have 2 NF??

EASY:
6.30: WU and BF; solids 1 hr later
9.45: nap
11: BF and solids 1 hr later
2.15: nap
3.30: BF; solids 1 hr later
6.30: BF
7: asleep

We can stick to this pretty well give or take a few minutes.  Sometimes bedtime is a little earlier if he had a crap nap.

Any advice??

[Layla]

Does he take a full feed when you feed him? How are you resettling him? Your routine looks good, maybe the soother is a problem because that is a lot of night wakings   . Do you have to replug for him to get back to sleep? Can he replug himself? Is he working on anything new/developmental?

[Jemimah]

Ya -  he does take full feeds at night.  We usually have to pick him up to resettle, and replug - sometimes it takes 1 min, sometimes 30 minutes.  We have resettled without the soother, just takes longer so we use it as it hadn't seemed to be a prop....but you are saying maybe it is, so we might have to revisit this.....  He cannot replug himself, as he just ends up playing with it and waking himself up more.  Developmentally, he is learning to crawl and trying to get up stairs, etc.....very adventurous little guy!!

[Layla]

If he's taking a full feed, he may still need it. You can work on eliminating to earlier feed (the early morning feed was the one we got stuck on until around 9 months with dd1 and 12months with dd2). Try giving him less every couple of nights until you're down to almost nothing (1 oz) and then try resettling rather than giving a bottle however if you are however finding you have to resettle him so many times at night and you need to use the paci every time (without the paci it takes longer) then it probably is a prop . I would try and resettle without picking him up to be honest, you only really need to pick him up if he's really upset. It's up to you whether you want to teach him how to replug himself and maybe put a couple of pacis in the cot or whether you want to get rid of it altogether and teach him how to self soothe without it