Hellobee Boards

if she's going back to sleep at those other times, i would continue with that practice! she'll let you know if she's hungry and wants to eat by NOT going back to sleep!

as for nursing more before bedtime, why do you feed so close together? (nurse, then solids, then nurse again) is it due to work schedule? if so, i would probably dial back on the solids as it's not necessary at that age. but that's me. can you nurse early than 530?

A couple thoughts:

1. My DD wakes up a few times throughout the night too, but generally only once to nurse. My rule is that I leave her for 10 minutes when she wakes up (she doesn't really cry...just wakes up and fusses a little) and if she's still awake after that I nurse her. Basically, if she's hungry she stays awake and if she's not she goes back to sleep.

2. Does your LO take a bottle? We also do nursing and then solids in the evening. But then my DH does bedtime so he gives her 5 oz of BM in a bottle. Not saying your DH has to do bedtime, but if you want to make sure she's taking in a good amount of milk you can try a bottle. But if she's just not hungry at that time then she just isn't hungry....

ETA: regarding nursing and then solids and then more milk at bedtime, I do find that the whole thing is a lot smoother if I don't nurse her too soon before solids. Like, usually 1.5-2 hours between nursing and solids. Then we do bath/massage/books and then bottle.

@Silva: When we were going through this and he seemed to be waking from habit rather than hunger I set times around which I would feed him. I know he could sleep 7:30-12:00 without a problem from experience and he eats every 3 hours during the day so I decided I would feed him near 12, 3, and 6. If he overslept his feeding times I would feed him when he got up. It worked for us, soon he was only waking at 12, 3, and 6 and now he's stretching out his sleep and last night ate at 1:30 and 5:30 and is magically still asleep at 8 am. If you don't know how long he can sleep then just set him on this daytime schedule, every 3, 4 hours or whatever you do and feed him around those time but not in between. Hopefully he'll stop waking so frequently

@Silva: I can tell you what we've done at least. I always tried to put him back down without nursing first. If he woke shortly after he fell back asleep I figured it was hunger and nursed. He is STTN now but when he was waking, the times were variable.

I know your LO is younger but our rough night schedule has been for a long time nurse around 3:30 dinner around 5:30 bedtime nursing at 630 usually asleep by 7. So if I were you I'd try to space that out more

@Silva: for us it was like 20 mins or less. Afternoons became our prime stroller walking time and park time for a while!! He seemed to grow out of the evening witching hour stuff around 8 months or so I think.

My LO is only 9 weeks but I'm starting to face this question too since my pedi said we could start skipping MOTN feedings. He is inconsistent with his sleep stretches so it's really hard to tell when he's really hungry and when his body just wakes him. WE don't know until we give him a bottle, sometimes he'll guzzle it and others he'll just snack a little. But I think what we'll start doing is letting him go back to sleep without sleeping on the first MOTN wakeup when we know he finished the whole bottle only a couple of hours previously. Maybe you could try that? LIke when you know your LO ate a lot at the last feeding you could just skip that wakeup?