Hi everybody! I'm Melissa. Welcome back to CloudMom. I'm dialing in from our rented
apartment here in Barcelona where I've come with my kids to visit some family
and friends. We have come here for a couple of summers. It's been a lot of fun
and I'm answering questions from viewers and this one is coming from a mom with a
nine month old baby and here's what she has to say. And I'm reading from my
computer because I don't have a printer here. So my nine month old still demands two
bottles at night. What to do. We share a bedroom and I don't believe in close
sleeping. I've given him slightly larger feeds before bed and smaller bottles at
night. I'm gonna try night bottles with a bit of cereal, but doing this before bed
hasn't helped in the past. So this is a baby who at nine months is still eating
very, very frequently at night. I get this question from a lot of moms. I think it's
sort of a classic and universal issue for people with young babies. What you do?
And obviously the schedule changes and develops during baby's first year, but my
general advice is to make sure that you're feeding the baby regularly during
the day, that the baby is awake, has burped, and is full, and that you feed at
very regular intervals. For a breastfed baby, that means every three hours. For a
baby who's being fed formula in bottles, that means every four hours and you
don't want to upset this schedule. And what you, what happens when you continue
to do this, is that the baby is getting most of the calories they need during
the day and they're awake for a lot of the day. So sooner or later you're going
to start to see those longer stints of sleep happening at night. But there's an
even more sort of novel question for CloudMom that you've raised here and my
hat you know goes off to you because I don't
often now get questions that I've never seen before since I started doing
CloudMom, and that is, should I put cereal in my baby's bottle? So that's the one
I'm gonna answer now and I actually looked up Doctor Greene on the internet
who's such a terrific resource. He's a very famous pediatrician and here's what
he has to say. He basically says, no you should not put cereal in your baby's
bottle and here's why. First off, he explained that putting cereal in baby's
bottles started a few generations ago when moms began to give their babies, you
know, formula feeding and he describes that at a very young age babies have a
very delicate sucking and breathing mechanism. He says that certain babies
didn't tolerate having the cereal because their sucking and
their swallowing were not yet well coordinated or developed. Some babies
inhaled the rice cereal and this led to pulmonary problems. Number two.
Doctor Greene says the babies have a very subtle, yet developed mechanism that
helps their bodies calculate what volume of food they should be consuming during
these early months. Adding cereal, according to Dr. Greene, upsets this
mechanism basically teaching them to overeat. Dr. Greene then says number
three that by introducing solid foods to your baby with a spoon,
by giving them a spoon and then waiting and stopping when they are full, you're
setting up good habits for a lifetime of healthy eating where the baby is in
touch with their body and understanding the feeling of being full and then
signaling to you okay, I'm good, I've had enough. Number four.
Dr. Greene links to, and I'm going to link to him, a major study which says
that short circuiting your baby's natural way of regulating what they
eat can be a cause for obesity later on. And finally number five. Dr. Greene links
to another study at the Cleveland Clinic where certain babies were given cereal
in their bottles and slept for no longer a period of time than the other babies.
In short, it just doesn't work. So why would you do it? Again, Regular feedings
during the day. The babies awake, the baby is burped, the baby is full, refusing
more food. Every three hours for a breastfed baby, every four hours for a formula
fed baby. If the nighttime feedings are becoming a
real problem consider a top-off feed at 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. at night where you
are waking your baby up to give your baby that top-off feed. Before that feed
hopefully you've taken a nap. After that feed hopefully both of you are in bed.
Ultimately that feed should fall away and your baby should do a longer stint
of sleep during which time you yourself are also asleep in your bed and things
should be moving in the right direction. If you're noticing that your baby seems
constantly fussy, never satisfied, that they're crying a lot, that they seem
hungry, definitely check with your doctor to make sure that the feeding process is
working well and that you're not dealing with a case of colic or severe
indigestion. Thank you so much for watching CloudMom. I really appreciate it
and I will see you guys back here again soon.