Is my 6 month old outgrowing EASY?

[Firenze]

My DD is almost 7 months old. She’s been doing great at night, only one waking for a feed, she puts herself to sleep independently at night. Within the last couple of weeks, she has finally started to lengthen her naps a bit, YAAY!! (before she was doing 3 naps a day, 30-40 minutes each). Now some of her naps are getting longer, and her awake time is also lengthening. I’ve been doing Eat Awake Sleep with her since she was a newborn but within the last few weeks, EASY seems to be completely falling apart on me. She wants to nurse before naps all of the sudden, I can’t seem to put her down without it. I’m not sure if it’s for comfort or for a feed. But now that I’ve been feeding her before naps (most times it’s just a 5-8 min feed or something like that), she doesn’t want to eat when she wakes up and things seem to have gotten jumbled up a bit. Now I feel like I’m just feeding her every couple of hours and they’re only short, unproductive little feeds. Like is she really getting her good feeds in anymore? That’s how it feels. Has EASY fallen apart on anyone else at this age? Any thoughts? Is it time to stop doing EASY? (I have not started solids yet.) I've been feeding every 2.5-3.5 hours normally, sometimes if she takes a big long nap then 4 hours. But now that she wants to nurse before naps, it's like I'm offering every 2 hours and things just seem all off. Any advice?

[creations]

Hi there
Sorry you didn't get a reply yet.
I have never stopped using EASY and my DS is 7yo... of course we don't do cycles of sleeping all day but he does still have morning milk with breakfast, 3 meals and 2 snacks and a regular waking and sleeping time. There's no need to stop at 6 or 7 months.
It's more likely a routine change is needed.  I see your LO is 7 months but you haven't started solids yet, is there a reason for this?  The advice is to start solids in a timely manner, at 6 months asthis benefits allsorts of aspects of development, not only learning tastes and textures that you eat as a family but also speech and language development and fine motor skill.
It also sounds like your LO is hungry if feeding every couple of hours as LOs this age would be able to go longer than that with solids between the milk feeds.  At this age your LO might not take a great deal but it could make a difference.

[Katet]

A few pieces of information I learned along the way might help you get your head around the problem.

With Growth Spurts in BF babies the quality of the milk changes, so they feed more for a period & then space their feeds out more, iif they feed too frequently for too long they often don't get the fat content to match their needs and so they keep needing to feed more to fill up. Around 6months old the solids help balance out the digestion as well and while the solids don't provide loads of nutrition they can make the tummy feel fuller and them not to need so much to milk.

Also Breast milk & feeding relaxes a baby & some cultures see no issue in feeding a baby to sleep & that works really well in cultures where babies are worn by their Mothers & sleep together, but not so great for Western ideals.  One of the reasons a baby falls asleep after a feed is the balance of chemicals in the milk, the other is they relax & switch off... kind of like an adult reading a book or listening to music before they fall asleep. The reason she's got into that habit is that it's become a "routine" for her... that's what she finds winds her down & you've fallen into that that habit. The key is to find a different way to help her unwind well enough to fall asleep AND that means change AND that often means tears as they get confused. 6mo is not too young to start having a story on your lap & then putting into bed & keep reading or singing a song... essentially you create a new routine with rituals that signify bedtime and have a calming effect to help her go to sleep.

It's been a while since I've had a 7mo routine, but really at this age they can be down to about 4 BF a day along side 3 solid meals -  I think I'd be looking at trying to have something along the lines of
7am wakeup & BF
7.30/8am Solids
10am Nap
11/11.30am wake up & BF
Noonish Solids
2ish Nap
3.30/4pm Wake up & BF
5.30pm Solids
6.30ish Bedtime Feed
7pmish Bedtime.

Now there is no way that would have worked for my youngest who only ever slept 10 hours at night. So his first feed was 6.30am & his last around 7.30pm & I tended to have his solids about 45mins to an hour after each milk feed.

What is important to realise is that if they are feeding every 2 hours then it's never going to be a filling meal & it gets into a cycle... unfortunately changing that cycle does often involve tears, but if you are there being a supportive parent who offers love & empathy while they get upset, they learn it's ok and it does improve... the tears aren't manipulation or naughty, but confusion and a bit of fear of the unknown. The more you help them through change when they are little the more you build foundations that help them to have trust as they get older,

It's not so much that she's outgrown EASY, but you aren't keeping pace with how changes need to happen as she gets older & the hard part is the changes often do mean tears (often from both  child & parent)

[*Ali*]

Actually the opposite has been found to be true . Breastmilk has a higher fat content in breasts that are emptied more frequently. Current advice is to breastfeed babies on demand, day and night as often as they want until 2yo or more.

Can I ask why you are not offering solids? Unless there's a medical reason and you've been advised to wait then I'd start immediately. Sounds like baby is just hungry for milk more often as she's not being offered anything else which babies this age typically would be.

[*Ali*]

https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/breastfeeding-the-dangerous-obsession-with-the-infant-feeding-interval/