5mo lo & night feeds

[-Maya-]

Hi all, I can't figure out a feed schedule for lo. He is 5mo and we started solid in the way that pedis suggest here. This means that we replaced one single meal (lunch for us) with solids. All other meals are bottles thickened by baby cereals (this was suggested by pedi again, to limit lo reflux).
Ideal lo food schedule would be:
0800 breakfast 150-180 ml thickened ff
1200 lunch, solids
1530 or 1600 snack 150-180 ml thickened ff
1900 or 2000 dinner 150-180 ml thickened ff

Then we would like to give a nf of thickened ff at 2300 or 2330 and that's all. This means lo would get 600 to 720 ml of ff and then solids. I think this is a good plan but lo disagrees.

First, according to him snack and dinner are too close. So I have the chance of reducing one of the two to 90ml, usually I choose snack. We can cope with this but it seems to me that lowering milk during the day affects nights as well.

When I do not give df to lo, he wakes up at 1 or 2am and he drains a 180ml bottle. Then he'able to sleep until 6 or 7 and his day repeats again. This is a very good schedule for him and a very bad one for us. Dh cannot go to sleep earlier than 2330 so he has just fallen asleep when lo wakes and no chance to let dh sleep while I feed lo.

Thus we try df. With df lo eats 120-150 ml at 2330 but then he wakes up at 4 or 5 am and wants his bottle again. He drains easily 150-180ml of ff before quicky falling asleep. But the day after he is not interested in breakfast until too late and the food schedule is broken unless I reduce breakfast to 90ml. In this case, lo is eating 360ml of milk during the day and 300ml during the night. I do not like this schedule because apart from lunch he's almost eating the same aandmount of milk during day and night.

What can I do to push lo to eat more milk during the day and less during the night? Common suggestion here is to give to lo just water or baby specific herb teas during night "to break the habits", but I see an hungry baby! He seems to be able to do longer stretches (7-8h) without eating during the night, but he simply does not when dream feeded. I do not know why. Do you have any suggestion about this?

Lo night is usually 8-8 and he has never fallen asleep with breast or bottle. Usually before givin bim bottle we try to resettle a couple of times. If he does not stay asleep for more than 20minutes usually it's bottle time.

I wonder if I am asking him too much for his age and size (he is a big boy of 73cm and 9kg, he has grown up very quickly uo to now).

[Lolly]

I think the reason that he is wanting milk at night is that he isn't getting enough in the day. How much cereal are you putting in the bottles? Adding cereal is a really old fashioned way to thicken a feed and really it isn't that safe as cereal doesn't thicken evenly and can be a choking hazard. If you look at how much cereal you are adding you will probably find it's a substantial amount for a tiny tummy and added to the solids you are giving at lunch it's a lot of solids in 24 hours (even in a bottle cereal still counts as part of the solids).

How is the reflux being treated? Can you get reflux formulas in Italy? That really is a better option if he is on an ordinary cow's milk based formula than thickening with cereal. If he is on a specialist formula you can thicken with a non-food thickener, Carobel is available in the UK for example.

If you use a non-food thickener or reflux formula you should find he actually takes more at a feed as his feeds are on the low side for his age.

The other thing to consider is putting the mid-day feed back in and offering some solids an hour after rather than instead of. Babies at this age should still be on 4 milk feeds during the day, solids are a complement or addition to milk feeds not a replacement until they are close to 1. Really, 7-8 hours is too long between milk feeds in the day. Most bottle fed babies don't drop to 3 bottles until they are 9-10 months old.

The other thing is your dreamfeed, Tracy said to do the DF between 10pm and 11pm as any later and it can disturb sleep as much as help it. Some babies just don't do well with a DF either, he may be better just feeding when he wakes naturally.

What do you think?

Laura

[-Maya-]

Your advice is very wise Laura. I need to think what to do to fix lo routine. I do not want to go fully against what pedi suggested because I am tired to fight old fashioned suggestions. Also because another old fashioned suggestion I received is to avoid to give too much formula to babies.