How Do I Stop those Night Feeds?
Mar 02, 2022
We had a question come in this month we thought was a good one to share, as it is quite a common problem.
“My 11 month old goes to bed with a bottle and wakes for a bottle in the night. How do I break her of this habit?”
Good question!
When you put your baby in bed at night, it’s fine to include the bottle/breastfeed in her routine. You could start with a bath, and then pajamas, and then her milk and a story or two.
What you really want to avoid is giving her the bottle until she falls asleep, or putting her in her cot with the bottle. You do not want your baby to fall asleep during this feed, if she wakes up in the middle of the night she thinks she needs that feed again to sleep. If you come with her bottle and feed her to sleep or put it into the cot, she sucks herself back to sleep with the bottle. Not only is that hard for her sleep strategies, it is also very damaging to her teeth that are coming in. So, maybe start the milk feed a little earlier in your routine. You can have a bath, then her milk, then brush her teeth and then back for some stories, but you should be putting her into the cot awake and without a bottle. Our programs will give you some strategies to deal with the two weeks it is probably going to take to get her on track and learning a new strategy for getting herself to sleep.
You don’t have to leave the room, you can stay with her if you like, but she really does need to start connecting the steps that are involved in putting herself to sleep independently so that she is not relying on her milk. Otherwise, she will most likely keep waking for the bottle. It could go on well into the second year so you really want to make sure you break this habit quickly.
Much Love,
Vanessa xo
