Breastfeeding 7 month old & weaning

[kellyrae]

Hi.....:wave:

I have been exclusively breast feeding for 6.5 months, the weaning is going great at the moment....my little man is now on breakfast, lunch & dinner a day. Loves his food....he still co sleeps with me, he sleeps in his cot during the day for naps and loves being in there.

At night he can be waking up up to 4-5 times a night for feeds?
But he never did that when he was just breastfed?

He has a good feed every time he wakes too!!

Does it mean he is still hungry or just looking for comfort?
I just presumed eating food would help him sleep through better as it did with my girls?

I never breastfed my girls for other reasons so I'm quite new to breastfeeding.
I just wondered if this is quite normal as I would like to start getting him in his cot during the night now.

 

[kellyrae]

Anyone? :/

 

[noon_child]

Milk is still his main source of nutrition and he will continue to demand more during growth spurts until food becomes his main source of nutrition (a slow process usually involving food picking up in volume at around 10months while milk feeds start to lessen from around that time).

At your LOs age his digestive system has not long been able to digest varied foods as efficiently as it can digest milk, so it may be that he is just not getting quite enough nutrition from his food and needs to keep up his milk too. That's fine if your fine with it, but if the night feeds are getting you down you might want to look in to whether there is anywhere you can squeeze more milk feeds in (or perhaps reduce portion sizes of food if you've noticed he has gone off his milk at any times during the day). The idea at this stage is to prioritise milk over food but still give plenty of opportunities for him to experiment with taste and texture.

I remember thinking at that stage that it felt like having a newborn again because once I'd cleared up after one meal it wasn't long before I'd have to be breastfeeding, and then not long before preparing the next meal. We struggled to leave the house much for a few weeks but it got better.