Another night weaning question

kelly321 · February 2012

As you can see from my ticker, DD was a preemie, and she's still around the 5th percentile in weight for her actual age and about 30-40th percentile for her adjusted age. She's stayed parallel to the growth curve the whole time, so I'm not worried about that.

What I'm worried about is whether it's right that I should try to get her down to 1 feeding / night. On her own, she still wants to eat about 3 times / night, and the times aren't regular, so I don't think it's just automatic waking. The tip I've often seen is, "Well just increase calories during the day." The problem with that is I don't know how. She still only drinks 3-4 oz / meal (we're FF), night or day. On the rare occasions when she finishes 4 oz I immediately offer her more, sometimes with success. But when she's done eating, then she's done. I can't force-feed her more. Same with solids. I let her eat as much as she wants, and if she's still hungry after the amount I've made then she gets a bottle.

Do you think I should try to get down to 1 feeding / night anyway and hope she makes the calorie adjustment on her own during the day? She seems to have done ok when I've Ferbered her down to 2 feedings / night, but as soon as she's sick or teething then she's back to her 3+ feedings schedule.

Elocin · February 2012

I have no true advice, but didn't want to read and not post. We always seem to take a step foward and two steps back when it comes to a middle of the night feeding with our LO. Bad cold? Middle of the night feeding. Tooth coming through? Middle of the night feeding. It's like we'll go through 5-6 days of her going down at 7-7:30 and getting up anywhere between 5-6:30 to another bunch of days when she's up at 2 or 3. I've tried to give her dinner earlier (5:30ish, which is tough with work schedules, it used to be 6) and then bump up her nighttime bottle with 2 more ounces than normal. It all depends though. It's like once I think we have a routine down, she changes it again.

LovelyLou23 · February 2012

kelly321:
Do you think I should try to get down to 1 feeding / night anyway and hope she makes the calorie adjustment on her own during the day? She seems to have done ok when I've Ferbered her down to 2 feedings / night, but as soon as she's sick or teething then she's back to her 3+ feedings schedule.

Personally, I would. At least you could try it and see how it goes. My personal experience has been that now that she has gone a good 7 hours without eating, I aim for that each night if/when she wakes up before that. But then there's always the cases like last night, when we kept going in time after time to lay her back down (she sits up and then can't lay back down), and I finally gave in and nursed her back to sleep. It's not worth me losing so much sleep, lol.

Bonnesetter27 · February 2012

We are sorta going through this now. My DS would eat about 30 oz a day if I let him but he needed to eat more solids and less formula. So I offered him only 24 oz and I immediately noticed him eat more during the day of solids. I would try cutting down to 2 night feeds and see what happens. You could also try offering her milk more often during the day. (Instead of waiting 4 hours give her a bottle every 2)

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