I get asked this question a lot, her is my answer for you.
As a health professional (Registered Pediatric nurse) my answer to this question will always be that if your child is six months or older, gaining weight as expected, and your doctor says you’re okay to end nighttime feeds, then go ahead and give it a shot.
But that doesn’t really answer your question, does it? Because that information is readily available on about a thousand different websites. If that was all you needed to know, you’d know it already.
Chances are, what you’re really asking is, “Why does my baby refuse to give up her night feeds?”
Because if you had stopped her night feeds and she just accepted it and started sleeping through the night, you wouldn’t be online reading this post. Instead, You would be in bed, enjoying eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, or you would be at a playdate telling other mums how easily your little one gave up night feeds and is sleeping through the night.
So, what is the real question you are asking? Why does your baby continue to wake up at night and demand food if they’re supposedly ready to give up night time feeds?
The reason is actually probably pretty simple. That’s how they get themselves to sleep.
Feeding and/or nursing to sleep is just about the biggest sleep prop I see as a sleep consultant. People don’t usually think of it as a “sleep prop” because of how natural and necessary it is. They tend to associate the term with pacifiers. But a sleep prop is really anything external that your baby relies on in order to get to sleep.
So if you’re still feeding your baby to sleep at bedtime, chances are, that’s where you need to make some changes.
“But I’m not!” I can hear you saying. “I put him to bed while he’s still awake, and he falls asleep independently! No props, no nothing! But he still wakes up three times a night looking to eat!”
Although it’s a less common scenario, I do see this fairly often. Mum is doing everything right at bedtime, but is still feeding baby to sleep when they wake up in the night.
Some babies are just habitual nighttime eaters. It’s not that they’re hungry, or in need of calories. They’ve just managed to disassociate bedtime sleep with waking in the night, and if Mum is still willing to give up some breast milk in the night, well then, they will continue to wake up for feeds!
The bad news is that you’re going to have to break this association by giving up night feeds. That’s going to mean some protesting, which won’t be fun for anyone.
But the good news is that, since your baby’s learned to sleep without props at bedtime, that means he’s already got some strong sleep skills, and the protesting should be over within a couple of nights.
So what’s the strategy for this? The same as it is for quitting just about everything else. Cold turkey. Stop tonight and don’t start again. The sooner your little one learns those skills, the sooner he’ll be sleeping through the night.
Onyi
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