6 month old - still hungry at night?

[Dovely73]

Hi,

My 6 month old is still waking in the night and appears to be hungry. He's EBF. I started solids about 3 weeks ago and he's absolutely loving it! Honestly, he's wants more and more and more. I end up taking the bowl away when I think he's had enough as we've really only just started and I don't want him to get tummy ache but he cries when I do it. Poor little thing. I'm worried that he just doesn't know when to stop!

I give him a dream feed at 11.00 and then he wakes once around 3.00 or 4.00am.

I put him in his cot wide awake for all his sleeps and he settles himself. He sleeps brilliantly during the day. I wake him after 2 hours and he has 2 sleeps a day with sometimes a cat nap in the evening around 5.00. Bedtime at 7.15pm. He always goes straight to sleep after dream feed and night feed so I don't think he's sleeping too much during the day.

He takes both sides for each breast feed, day and night. His routine is fairly BW textbook for this age.

I'm drawing the conclusion that he's just hungry and I'm hoping that as we increase his solid intake he'll be able to go longer in the night. Is that realistic? Does it just happen on its own as they have more solid food? DS1 went through the night at 3 months and never looked back so this is new territory for me! We did a bit of gentle sleep training when he was just about 5 months old and he quickly got the idea of sleeping through but then started waking up again and we regressed back to where we started.

It's so difficult to know what to do. Should I stop feeding him in the night so he increases his day time food or should I feed him in the night and just wait for him to go through on his own?

Thank you

[Layla]

Hi there,

In my opinion 2 night feeds at 6 months is still ok, especially if he is properly eating and not just snacking or using your breast as a prop. You mentioned he's on solids - we started solids around 5.5 months but at 6 months we were only having 1-2 tablespoons for breakfast and nothing else but milk. Mine is also EBF and I have no idea in terms of how much milk she was getting but I also offered both sides. I would even go as far as to say you should maybe cut back on solids as milk has more calories and too much solids can reduce how much milk he is taking and as a result he will wake at night to make up for those calories. Solids for the first 12 months is just for play.

If you want to try and wean one of the night feeds, I would maybe start with offering one side only (which is how I went about it) and then gradually reduce the amount by reducing the minutes.

We were on 2 naps at 6 months and our routine was:

6am - wake and BF (both sides or 1 side if she had an early morning feed around 4-5am)
7ish - solids (1-2 tablespoons of avacado with apple puree)
9-10.30 - morning nap
10.30 - BF (both sides)
1.30-3pm - afternoon nap
3pm - BF (both sides)
5pm - cluster feed (one side)
6pm - final feed and bed (usually 1 side but would offer 2)
Night wakings - anywhere from 0-2

HTH