Help, my baby still wakes up to feed at night!
Waking to feed a baby in the night is one of the toughest jobs parents of little ones do. But one of the points of confusion we hear from parents is when is it healthy, normal, and necessary for a baby to wake up to eat, and when do they no longer need to eat at night, but do so out of habit?
It’s natural and optimal for newborns to eat frequently, owing to their small tummies, developing digestive systems and immature circadian clocks. Round the clock feeds also boost babies' brain development. For nursing babies, night feeds are essential early on, to establish the supply and demand of the breastfeeding relationship. In the first 5 months of a babies life, in fact, we do not recommend weaning from night feedings. (Although we DO recommend using the Soothing Ladder strategy, which you can learn in depth in the 0-4 MONTH ONLINE CLASS ). The Soothing Ladder is key to helping you follow and naturally stretch your baby’s sleep during the first 4 months of her life.
Once a baby reaches 5 months, however, most pediatricians would agree that she no longer needs calories during the night, as she can meet all her nutritional needs during the day. This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with feeding your baby after the age of 5 months, but it does mean a few things:
After the age of 5 months, you have choices about how you approach feeding and sleep. You can continue to feed when your baby wakes, or you can gradually wean your baby’s night feedings.
A baby who wakes to eat multiple times a night after 5 months, is often doing so out of habit. This does not mean that she is not legitimately hungry, it means that she has a pattern of waking and eating that has led her body to learn and expect this. Her tummy may actually be growling, because she’s used to eating at this time. Just as our bodies learn and adjust to daytime eating (we get hungry at breakfast, lunch, and dinner time), our night brains also know what time it is and can easily attach to night eating patterns.
Weaning night feedings is actually very doable! It can be a little painstaking at first, because our night weaning guidelines (learned in the 4-24m online class or our book) are VERY gradual, but it’s the friendliest to your baby’s tummy and your breasts if you’re breastfeeding, and it truly works.
You need a way to respond to your baby’s frustration/protest about you very gradually decreasing her feedings. The weaning guidelines are meant to slowly get your baby used to less milk, so she’s not hungry, but that doesn’t mean she won’t have feelings about the change! Learning the SLEEP WAVE method is important, so you have a way to respond to your baby if she is upset. We find that it works extremely well to start weaning night feeds at the exact same time you begin the Sleep Wave.
If your goal is to breastfeed your baby for the first year or beyond, then maintaining a strong milk supply is very important. This means that you may want to keep one feeding in place for a few months (until 7 months or so), or that you should pump right before you go to bed, so you are not going for 12 hours without feeding or pumping. Weaning too early or putting your baby on a strict feeding schedule, in general, leads to lower milk supply.
Seems crazy that in five short months, your baby goes from really needing night feeds to actually sleeping better without them. It’s due to their rapid development that babies quickly become like us. Now, they will sleep more soundly when their digestive systems can shift into rest mode at night. The idea is to let your baby sleep deeply and peacefully (and you too), once she is capable. If there is no feeding to think about in the night, she can get busy sleeping, which is what she wants to do — we promise!
FOR MORE ON THE SOOTHING LADDER: ONLINE SLEEP CLASS FOR BABIES 0-4 MONTHS
FOR MORE ON THE GRADUAL WEAN AND THE SLEEP WAVE: ONLINE SLEEP CLASS FOR BABIES 4-24 MONTHS