Hungry milk only before bedtime

[chele]

Max is sleeping through around 7-9 hours a night. I can't really complain about this can I?!

But it would be nice for him to go these 9 hours so he wakes up at a more respective time, e.g. down at 10pm then up at 6am. Max would never last until 10pm and he goes to bed when I notice his signs point to his need to go to bed for the night (generally around 6.30-7.30pm)

e.g. last night he slept from 6.45pm - 3.30am, fed then back to sleep then up for the day at 7.30am.

A friend of mine who's baby slept 12 hours a day from about 8 weeks suggested I do what she did which was feed her LO Hungry Milk for their last feed. She even added an extra scoop of feed to the bottle.

Ok so I am not keen on adding the extra scoop but wondered about whether to try giving him a Hungry Milk bottle before bed

Anyone done this?

 

[gingajewel]

Hi, i do this The last feed i give LO at 10:30 i give hungry feed, she then generally sleeps anythime between 4:30 and 6:30. She is starting to take an extra ounce now so fingers crossed for a bit longer!

I will be watching this thread to see what other peoples opinions of this are!

Thanks

Gail

 

[321mummy2b]

I used to give my little boy HB only for his last bottle,
then I did it for the ones when he finished his whole bottle,
then eventually he moved on to 6mo (when he was weaned at 5m&3w)
x

 

[chele]

I used to give my little boy HB only for his last bottle,
then I did it for the ones when he finished his whole bottle,
then eventually he moved on to 6mo (when he was weaned at 5m&3w)
x

Did you start this from early on?

 

[StarBlueUK]

From what I can gather, it's a bad idea to give them an extra scoop because they can get constipated. How old is your baby? Mine is 2 weeks old and is currently waking up every 2 hours. I'd be more than happy with the set up that you have going right now! You sleep!

 

[suzib76]

personally i am not a fan of this idea, if lo wakes in the night for milk it is becasue they need it, feeding hungry baby milk as a last feed is for the parents benefit not baby's

if a baby genuinely needs hungry baby milk they need it all the time,

 

[Rach28]

We use HB milk for his bedtime feed, TBH it makes no difference, he still wakes in the night for a feed.

He is a hungry baby and we did try using HB milk for all his feeds, it made no difference to his hunger other than to make him badly constipated. So we stopped using it, I now plan to stop with the HB milk at night as it doesnt agree with him.

I'm just going to let him have as much stage 1 milk as he needs until we are ready to wean.... so many many more sleepless nights for us

 

[Windmills]

Daisy is 5 weeks and draining 7oz every 3-4 hours, I'm about to change her onto hungry baby milk as sometimes she only just makes it to 3 hours.. But I'm going to change every feed. I wouldn't give it for just one feed because it's different proteins, my mw said it wasn't a good idea to mix the normal formula with the HB one as it's casein based? I don't know if that's true, just what she told me

 

[leelee]

personally i am not a fan of this idea, if lo wakes in the night for milk it is becasue they need it, feeding hungry baby milk as a last feed is for the parents benefit not baby's

if a baby genuinely needs hungry baby milk they need it all the time,

I have to say I agree with SuziB. I have no problem with HB milk and when/if Max needs it I will give it to him. But I wouldn't give it to him to get him to sleep longer. I think he will sleep longer when he is ready. He is currently sleeping between 7-9 hours per night and that is good enough for me.

 

[Rhiannon]

if LO needs the milk in the night i would rather give them that.

rhys has slept through 8pm - 6.30am for the last 3+ months. what i have started to do with him now is give him a spoonfull of baby porridge in his milk - its like the nighttime milk really.

however i only do this as i was recommended it for reflux purposes when he was small. his reflux is much better now so he doesnt have it in his day bottles, but it tends to play up at night so i give it to him to make his bed time feed easier for him.

 

[baileybram]

i was looking for an answer to this exact question on google yesterday. My son was a hungry baby and went onto it full time from about 8 weeks and it worked reaaly well but he was draining 8 -9 oz every 3 hours it was madness. Beth is very different she is feeding every 2-21/2 hours but only takes 5 oz but its like her tummy isnt big enough to take any more quantity than that the nighttimes are a nightmare as once shes fed and ive settled her back down ive only got 1 hour to sleep and by this point i find it really hard to settle as i know i will be up in another hour. Im considering a hb feed just at the night time feed to see if it helps but must admit i dont want to do it just to make her sleep longer but i think she would be more settled with a bit longer sleep even if i could just stretch it to 4 hours!

 

[May Mum2b]

i give my LO HB at nightime and it made such a difference to her feeds, she used to wake up at night wanting feeding every hr when once you feed, wind and put down your up again 2 mins later! its just not right. my HV said for the mental and physical health of us both to give HB at night. LO is fine and takes 3-4oz of stage 1 during day every 3-4 hours. i don't know why she was different at night but its working for us. i also checked on the aptamil website - there is a live chat where you can ask a health rep your Q's they get back to you personally within seconds! well worth it!!

hope you get some more sleep and you LO gets some quality kip too!

 

[glong88]

Harrison has had HB milk for his last feed at night since about 10 weeks. I wouldnt say its made him sleep longer as he only sleeps about 6hrs however it has made him ALOT more settled during them 6 hours so he is no so tired and grumpy in the day as he was waking every 1hr or so then settling back down himself.

 

[Natasha2605]

Personally I wouldn't do it just for the sake of sleeping longer. I think that hungry baby milk should be given consistently if the baby genuinely needs it, not as a means of sleeping longer for convenience xx

 

[RainbowDrop_x]

Someone tried me to try this as LO was going down at 11.. up at 2. then again at 4.30. I tried it twice. Would NOT recommend it. I only gave her it on her last feed but it just made her violently sick. She has since dropped her 2 o clock feed so she goes down about 10 - 11 and then is up at 4.30 for the day. Yes it is exhausting but if she needs it and she's waking for it then I would rather get up to give her what she needs.

HB milk if it isn't needed is just too heavy for a babies tummy and by the time Livia threw the whole feed back up she was hungry again because she'd empty her stomach. Not worth it

 

[chele]

Thanks for all your replies ladies
I still haven't decided yet and am going to see what happens the next week or so. Last night he was up at 1am so am confused as to how come he can sleep sometimes til 5am and then others be up at 1am?!

 

[littleblonde]

to start off i would never add an extra scoop inless was adding extra water. That is not good for baby and could give them tummy upset. Kacey was on hungry baby at 8 weeks. But she had it for all her feeds and was already sleeping 12 hours staright. Aptimal hotline told me its not recomenede till baby is at least 12lb's as it can make them constipated. It did make kacey constipated and she was over that. I dide change her over slowly 1 feed a day at a time as she was on comfort and i wanted to make sure she was ready to come off.

 

[littleblonde]

Thanks for all your replies ladies
I still haven't decided yet and am going to see what happens the next week or so. Last night he was up at 1am so am confused as to how come he can sleep sometimes til 5am and then others be up at 1am?!

Just saw this reply hun. When kacey was 6 weeks old she started sleeping 12 hours a night. But we noticed that she sometimes slept 12 hours and sometimes woke at about 4am. She would have couple of oz then sleep till 8am. We wondered why sometimes she would wake up and other times not. Especially as she wasnt hungry. We then noticed that when she woke up it was cause she had kicked her blankets off and was cold. The nights she slept through she still had her blankets on. We got her a baby sleeping bag and i can now count on one hand the amount of times she has woke up since and she in almost 18 weeks old. She was born in march so im assuming your baby isnt cold however your baby could be waking due to some other discomfort. Maybe worth looking into. Kacey slept 12 hours before hungry baby so its not always about hunger. When she dropped one night feed at 5 weeks so was goinmg about 7-3am then till 730am i did give her an extra feed during the day as i was worried that she wasnt getting enough milk. I even tried waking her at night but she just fall asleep agagin. So i do wonder if the extra day feed was filling her up at night.

 

[smokey]

I gave Brian hungery baby milk as last feed when he was about 2 months because he was going through a major growth spurt and was constantly feeding (or so it felt) I soon changed my mind after about 4 days as for some reason it seemed to make him realy hyper and at one point he was awake for 16 hours straight and was a nightmare to get to bed and was just bouncing off the walls then screaming from being tired then bouncing again all night.
So just be warned it could have the complete oppesite effect that your after

 

[smokey]

Have you tried a dream feed instead? its not for everyone but worked great for us.
He goes to bed at 8 has a dream feed at 12 and is fine then till 8am so esentialy sleeps through from 8-8 (you can work the feeding times around to suit yourself)