Baby Wants to Eat All Night...

HI my name is L. i am a mother of 4, I understand what you are going through i too experienced this with 2 of my 4 children, what worked for me was giving them a bottle before bedtime that contained cereal. It fills their stomachs more and may help them sleep through the night.

My son is 19mo. and believe it or not, I can't quite remember how 7mo. olds are!! However, I know as they get older they do not physically NEED to eat in the middle of the night. I think at 7mo. I still nursed my son once at night. However, 18oz. at night does seem like a lot. Does he eat well during the day? Is his growth on track (not vs. the growth charts our ped's use, but vs. his own historical growth record)? I would call your ped. & get his opinion. You surely don't want to withhold food if he's hungry, but you also don't want to aid in creating a habit of him waking at night to eat if he doesn't need to. Good luck!

Hi J., my son was the exact way, i begin to feed him with soups and gave later his bottle, guess what it works, these little monsters grove up so fast they still want their bottle but in the mean time the bottle contains too much liquit not enough to keep him full. My suggestion is begin to solid foods like carrots, potato, lean meat broil them , blend them mix a little bit water feed him.

If he was mine I would start introducing cereal before bedtime.

I had that same problem at 7 months. My son slept through the night from about 4 months on, then all of a sudden he kept waking up and he seened as if he really needed to eat. We started feeding him more baby food at dinner and gave him a "snack" of yogurt right before bed. That helped - the poor little guy was just hungry.

When he was almost one he had an ear infection and started waking up again at 3 am. When the infection gone he was "used to" that 3 am nursing; at that time I nursed him 1 minute less each night and after a few nights he was sleeping through again.

Good Luck - hopefully you will get to sleep again soon!

J.,
My 7 month old daughter is doing the exact same thing your 7 month old son is doing. I was so glad to read your request because I need the advice from the responses as well.
After reading the responses so far, I think I'm going to try cereal before bed. If that doesn't work, then I think I'll try adding more solids during the day too. I also thought reducing the formula by half an ounce every night was great idea. I'll definitely be doing that tonight!
My pediatrician says that babies this age do not need to eat at night. It's just so frustrating when you know your baby is hungry. Sat. night my daughter downed three six ounce bottles through the night like she was starving. She is such an active little stinker (crawls and pulls herself to stand) that I think maybe she really works up an appetite during the day. However, I can barely get her to finish a bottle during the day because she's too busy trying to keep up with her sisters. I'm going to try harder to make bottle and meal times better and bigger for her during the day, and maybe I'll get more sleep at night. Good luck!

All my kids did this... and as soon as we gave them more food during the day they stopped. All my kids ate way more than all the books recommended at this age. If they didnt' eat that much, they'd be up at night hungry. At 7-8 months it was 3 meals a day at the table with decent sized portions -- 6-8 tablespoons of cereal and half a banana for breakfast, typical lunch/dinner was a toddler plate (3 sections) full of food and usually asked for more. Snacks was breastfeeding and also random handfuls of cheerios or kix or other cereals. When they ate as much as they wanted during the day, they slept 11-12 hours at night. When they had a 'light' day, they were up at least once. My kids were always in the 50-75% range so they weren't too big - they were just very active and burned many calories.

My son will be 7 months this week and he's started waking up more at night lately too. I'm hoping it's just teeth coming in and he'll go back to sleeping like he used to.

I don't have any solution for you just wanted to let you know we're going through the same thing. I hestiate to feed him too much at night because I don't want him to get in the habbit of waking up to eat. But at the same time it's the easiest way to get him back down. Usually I try to hold off as long as possible by just rubbing his back or rocking. Sometimes it works but usually not. Good luck. Let me know if you find a solution.

I don't have any experience with formula, but my babies would start to "cluster nurse" at night as well. Could you try to feed him one more feeding sometime during the day? Or start weaning him off from the large amount of formula at night by giving him just 4 ounces per feeding and then going down to 3, then 2 etc.. to wean him off from the nighttime bottles.

I don't know what your sleeping arrangement is, but maybe he is just wanting some extra attention from you during the nighttime hours. You could bring him into bed with you for snuggle time if it seems he wants the attention more than the formula.

Good luck!

I'd recommend taking away part of the bottle (like 1/2 oz.) each night. That way you're not cutting him off cold turkey, but he'll get weaned slowly. We did this with my daughter when she was about 5 months old... I nursed her 1 minute less every night till she actually stopped before her minute was up and then was done.

Good luck!

Hi J., I had the same problem. I have a 7 1/2 month old son and he was waking up for a 10 pm, 1-2 am and a 5-6 am bottle (8 ounces each time). My doctor told me that he shoud be sleeping through the night and if he is getting enough nutrients/food during the day, he should have more than enough to get him through the night w/o waking up for a bottle. I realized that he had gotten used to me giving him a bottle when he woke up. Last week, we decided to let him cry it out for the 10 pm and the 1-2 am wake ups. When he wakes up for his 5-6 am bottle, that's when I give it to him. So far, this has worked. He hasn't cried more than 1/2 hour for those middle wake ups and he is learning to soothe himself back to sleep. I know some parents are anti-cry it out, but for us, it is working.

My 6 month old all of a sudden quit sleeping through the night and we discovered it was because she wasn't getting enough baby food during the day. We let her eat until she stopped every feeding and she slept through the night. If she doesn't get enough to eat, she'll have me up. My older daughter did this to me too and for her I just decided one night I wasn't getting up with her and she got herself back to sleep and didn't wake me during the night again unless she was sick. I know letting them cry it out is hard but she didn't cry much. Hope this helps.

Hello, my name is D.. My daughter is 9 months and I went through the same thing. What we did to help her, and us, get a good night sleep was to keep her up as late a possibe, 9pm-10pm and feed her than. As a week went by we would move the time by a have an hour until she went to sleep at 8pm. She now sleeps 9-12 hours without feedings. Also remember that babies will wake up an average of 3 time a night. We would let her fuss, as long as it didn't seem to be a pain cry, for awhile instead of getting up and feeding her and she would fall back asleep on her own after about 10 min. He is probably not really hunger for food just the comfort. I am not saying it is easy to allow your baby to fuss but after a few nights he should be able to comfort himself which will help him as he gets older when you can't be there.