Night feeding can be tiring and exhausting,
especially if it's happening multiple times a night.
But, what do we do?
How do we get rid of it?
Today's question is, how do I wean from night feeds?
So, the first thing we need to look at, though,
is if your baby is actually capable
of sleeping through the night.
It's still quite normal to have one or two night wakes
or night feeds until your baby is established on solids.
And by established on solids,
we mean your baby is having at least
two meals a day of around about half a cup.
Until then, we can still, it's completely normal
to see one or two night wakes for a feed.
Once your baby is established on solids,
the next thing we need to look at is
if your baby is waking out of genuine hunger
or if your baby is waking out of a habit wake.
A couple of things that we can work out
if it's a habit vs hunger wake,
is if the wake is happening at exactly
the same time every night,
it is more likely to be out of habit.
Another indicator is,
if you are feeding your baby overnight,
if they are then not interested in having breakfast
or their first milk feed of the day once you start the day.
So there are a couple strategies
to wean from night feeds and I'm going to go through
our three that we often recommend to our customers.
Option One.
Resettle at the first wake
and then feed at the next wake and so on.
So alternating feeds and resettling.
You continue doing this for a few nights
until the first wake has disappeared
and that would generally happen
after three to four nights of doing that.
Option Two.
Option two is to reduce the amount
of feeds that you are offering your baby,
whether it be bottle or breast milk.
You can easily do this by reducing the amount
of a bottle every three days by 30 mills or one ounce.
Now you do this every three days,
and you only ever do it at the first wake
until the first wake is gone,
and then would repeat with the next wake.
If you are breastfeeding,
you would reduce the amount of feeding time
by five minutes every three days.
Once the bottle is down to 60 mills or two ounces,
you can resettle now without needing to have a feed.
The same if you're breastfeeding
once you're down to a five minute feed
you can resettle instead of feeding.
So this option gives us a way of slowly reducing
the night feeding so that your baby
can increase their calorie intake
through the day and it allows them to catch up
without being hungry overnight.
Option Three.
Option three is only for those
who are absolutely positive that every single night wake
or even if there is one night wake,
it is definitely not hunger,
is to just stop feeding at all overnight.
Now I'd only recommend this option
if you have one wake and you are absolutely 100% sure
that your baby isn't waking out of genuine hunger.
So there are our three options
of reducing night feeds and I hope that helps.
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