MOTN Feedings?

Felicity86 · August 2013

My twins go to sleep pretty easily, but one is still up to eat 3 times a night (formula fed). They are 6.5 months and have "caught up" in size. Is this too much? I really thought we'd be down to 1-2 feedings by now.
Also - how did you cut out night feedings? Most of what I find on various sleep training methods only addresses getting to sleep. My ped wants us to do strict CIO... not willing to do that but would consider Ferber.

ETA: I certainly don't want to drop feedings if he's hungry, but it's hard to know. He usually does finish his bottle during these wake-ups...but, sometimes I wake his twin to eat (who can STTN) and she'll finish hers as well even though she wasn't necessarily hungry. Dumb question, but how do you know if it's habit or hunger? Thinking I should just wait for him to drop it

jd614 · August 2013

i think babies tend to wean themselves when they are ready-just my opinion from everything i have seen with my son at 6.5 mos old. despite my efforts, he always just corrects himself! what i will say is maybe you can up what you are feeding them during the day, so that he/she is not waking up from actual hunger. If LO is hungry they need to eat, but if he/she is waking up for comfort just to be with you, thats trainable. the last few mornings DS has been getting up around 5am (normally 6/630am wake up) and i can actually hear his stomach growling. So i fed him more at dinner last night and he slept again til like 6:05am. give it a shot!

tiffanyp · August 2013

I think Ferber recommends either diluting the bottles a little more each night, or just offering a little less each night. At the same time, you need to slowly space out the night feelings, so on the first night, if they wake up less than 3 hours since their last feeding, then don't feed them. On the second night, 3.5 hours. Etc. I need to do this too. I've been hoping it would resolve on its own, but so far no luck. I did this with DD1 and it was really difficult because she was BF. It should be easier this time with my FF baby, but I haven't gotten around to it.

kelly321 · August 2013

Yep, Ferber recommends either diluting the bottles or increasing the spacings between feedings. DD2 is still up at least 3x / night, usually more. Right now she's getting 50% bottles (instead of 2 scoops for 4 oz, we put in 1 scoop). Sometime this weekend we'll go down to 25%.

Honestly, we're just trying it to save our sanity. It never worked with DD1, who we also had the same problems with. But each kid is different, so it's worth a try.

Felicity86 · August 2013

If you space out the feedings, what do you do when they wake up before the allotted time? The 3 minute, 5 minute, 7 minute checks/soothing?

tiffanyp · August 2013

Felicity86 said:

If you space out the feedings, what do you do when they wake up before the allotted time? The 3 minute, 5 minute, 7 minute checks/soothing?

It depends I suppose. Does he need to be sleep trained in addition to night weaned? If the only reason he's waking up is because he's hungry, then you can help him get back to sleep by rocking, giving him a pacifier, or whatever other method you use. When I tried this with DD1, the only way I could get her back to sleep without feeding her was by singing to her. With this one, I'll probably just put her paci back in and turn on her lullaby music.

DublinMama · August 2013

I started to question the habit of it when DS would start moving it up earlier and earlier, to the point where it wasn't even logical for him to be hungry, given what time he last ate. When he got down to two ounce bottles, I knew it wasn't hunger because two ounces wouldn't fill him, anyway. He was drinking 6 oz. bottles during the day. He was just waking up between sleep cycles and was upset about it, and even though we didn't feed him to sleep and he went into bed DBA, he still wanted to start the routine over again in the MOTN.

So we did a modified CIO, which I posted went horribly, and it did, in the sense that he did stop crying but never went back to bed. So I caved and fed him bc at that point sleep was pouring down the drain for everyone. But the next night he STTN and has every night since, knock wood!! I don't know what about pushing the feeding back so long did, or if he just sort of somehow sensed that we would no longer come running in with a bottle so what was the point of all of it, but something clicked. Which also sort of solidified my belief that it was starting to become habit.

khaze · August 2013

My formula fed baby was getting up once a night for a bottle and always finished it so I figured he was hungry during the night. At his 6 month checkup last Wednesday, the pedi was thinking it was a habit because he woke up like clockwork almost exactly the same time each night. The pedi suggested we try to put him back to sleep when he would wake for a bottle. If he wouldn't go back to sleep or if he woke up again, we were supposed to feed him then because that would most likely indicate that he truly was hungry. So that night when he woke up, I stuck him in his swing to get him back to sleep easily and he slept through the entire night for the first time. He's slept through the night without waking each night since then.

So I guess if I were you, I would get him back to sleep after his first waking and see what happens.

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