At the home of the Sleepytot baby comforter we know that having a young child is pretty full on. The amount of emotion you feel and the range of you go through is staggering. A lot of the reason for all this emotion is the sheer joy of having a child; they do bring you a lot of happiness and determination to look after them. Another reason why you go through the range of emotions and such extremes is because they are hard work.
Sometimes your little one just won’t be easy and you will find being a parent of a young child seriously affects the amount of sleep you get.
One of the main reasons why your little one might not be sleeping at nights very well is because of night time feeds. In a previous article we advised you on possible ways of weaning your baby off night feeds.
The methods in the article are quite foolproof but sometimes, it isn’t enough, sometimes they just won’t go back to sleep.
Still not sleeping
If this is the case, your baby may not be ready to go through the night without a feed. What you need to do in this scenario is to increase your baby’s milk and food intake during the day.
Be sure though to not increase the number of feeds your little one has however, just the amount of milk they receive, or longer on the breast at each feed.
Also make sure to give your baby lots of nutritious foods throughout the day to meet his growing needs.
Weaning off
Before you start to wean your baby off milk in the middle of the night, it’s really important to make sure you are not feeding your baby to sleep at bedtime. If this is the case, you need to fix bedtime first by changing the time you offer milk to before story or bath so that you are ending your baby’s association with milk and sleep.
When you have sorted this out you can then start to wean your baby off night feeds by reducing your baby’s milk at each feed. Then, the following day, make sure your baby gets that extra ounce of milk somewhere.
Do this each night until you are down to two ounces or about 2 minutes on the breast. Anything less than this is too little and will just frustrate your baby.
Eventually you can wean your little one off a night time feed altogether and there you have it, time for some extra sleep for all you parents.
NOTE: Check with your Health Visitor to make sure your baby’s growth and weight are all fine when changing eating habits.
