Feeding FAQ: 4-6 months – Weaning

We have weaned our 5mth son on advice but he is still waking up hungry in the night

I have been following the routines since my son was two weeks old and have found it great. Although we have only had a handful of nights where he has sleep through to 7am we have enjoyed the structure of the days and the fact that we only have to get up once in the night. We have tried and failed with the 10pm feeding and therefore ask a lot to go for 12 hours! The 10pm feed seems to make him hungrier and we are up at least three times if we did a 10pm feed. However the last few weeks have seem him been very unsettled in the night – sometimes up every two hours! At the advice of the health visitor we started weaning at four months and have been following your weaning guide. My biggest problem is that at 6pm his milk intake has gone down dramatically. He used to drink 6oz at 5pm and then 7oz at 6.30pm before bed. Now that we have started solids he will only drink a total of around 7oz during this time. We still spilt the feed and offer the solids at 5pm as he is just too hungry and the mess created during feeding seemed silly to do after a bath. With his milk intake being lower now at this time, I wonder if this is why he is waking up. When he wakes in the night – he is hungry and we have to feed him to settle him back to sleep. Also he seems to dislike the baby rice – any suggestions on an alternative? He eventually eats it – but what a struggle.

My son takes feeds at 7am 7ozs, 1 tablespoon of banana porridge with 1 table spoon of fruit [peach, apple or pear], 11am 7ozs, 4 cubes of vegetables offered. He eats between two to four cubes. 2.30pm 6ozs, 5pm 4ozs, 4 tsp baby rice mixed with two to three cubes of fruit. He eats anything between half of this to all of it. 6.30pm, 4-5ozs. During the night if he wakes he takes 4ozs to settle. He weighs 17lbs.

My son naps at 9-9.40am and 12-2pm. He settles at 7pm and may wake around 2am.

Getting the balance of milk and solids right in the first months of weaning can be tricky. If your baby cuts back too much on his daytime milk because of his solid food he will wake in the night hungry.

To ensure that he continues to increases his solid intake but not at the expense of his milk you will need to change things slightly.

Breakfast is usually offered at some point in the early stages of weaning, once a baby begins to show signs of hunger well before 11am. If your son is struggling to eat all his breakfast solids then cut back on them. Try him with one to two teaspoons of cereal mixed with some fruit puree and formula. When he begins to increase his solids at lunchtime you can gradually increase his breakfast again. Look at the notes on page 24/25 of The Contented Weaning Guide which explains about introducing breakfast into a baby’s diet. Once breakfast is well established you can begin to move his lunchtime on towards 11.30/11.45am.

If your son shows signs of taking his solids better due to his decrease in breakfast you could begin to use the “tier method “of feeding him at lunchtime. Look at page 25 of The Contented Weaning Book to see how this method is used. It will help your son begin to eat increased amounts of solids at this time and begin to reduce his milk feed in preparation for dropping it once protein is introduced at six months. Make sure that you give your son the correct combination of vegetables at lunchtime. This means using sweet potato, barley cereal or avocado as the main part of the meal. Other vegetables such as carrots or courgettes are used in smaller quantities mixed with the carbohydrate base.

Using the split feed, as you have been doing, can help your son take enough milk at the right times in the evening, as well as all his solids, but it may be better to structure it in a slightly different way. Milk is still the most important part of his diet and therefore he needs to be offered the main part of his feed i.e. the milk before the solids. If he is too tired or hungry to wait until after his bath split the feed in the following way. Try to get your son to wait until 5.30pm. Offer him 6ozs of milk followed by the baby rice and fruit. Then delay his bath until 6.30pm and offer him a further 2-3ozs before he settles to sleep.

If your son really finds his rice and fruit difficult to eat you could try substituting sweet potato mixed with a vegetable, similar to the ones he is having at lunch time. The reason rice is given at this time in the day is because it is a good filler and will therefore help sustain him through the night. There are other wheat/ gluten free cereals such as millet or barley which you could try mixed with fruit puree. Oats can be given to a baby before the age of six months. They do contain a form of gluten but it is considered to be of a different kind from that contained in wheat and, therefore, can be used at an earlier age.

Before he started to wean, your son was drinking quite a lot of milk at 5pm/6pm. This could have been one of the reasons why he never would feed properly at 10pm, but subsequently woke hungry. A baby of his weight should be content with a full feed of 8ozs [at the maximum 9ozs] at one feed.

It may help you to read two of Gina’s case studies which deal with similar problems of babies waking hungry in the night as their daytime needs were not being met quite in the right way. Look in The Complete Sleep Guide, pages 89-95. Once you are sure that your son is eating and drinking the right amount by day then you need to eliminate his night feedings. If he continues to wake in the night and takes milk to settle he will begin to associate settling back to sleep with being fed. He will also not increase his intake of milk and solids by day if he is drinking 4-8ozs of milk in the night. A vicious circle is being created.

The best way to eliminate these night feeds is to use the “core method” and get rid of them one by one. Gina explains this method on page 148-9 in The Contented Little Baby Book. She also includes an explanation in The Complete Sleep Guide, page 42.