Baby won't nurse during the day? Distracted? Reverse Cycling?

[evgreen]

My daughter will be 8 months in a few days and for the past week or two she has been losing interest in nursing during the day. I work part time and gone for about 6 hours for the day. During the time that I'm away, she'll have about 8-9oz of milk from a bottle which isn't much. Lately she's been refusing the bottle too and the helper will feed her milk from a cup which she tolerates pretty well, but always tries to offer the bottle first. I used to come home and nurse her right away, but she is not interested and becomes distracted now.

I am still nursing her at night because she definitely needs the nutrients from breast milk. She will typically wake 2-3 times a night to nurse. On the weekends, it's the same. Even if we have a no bottle policy while I'm home, she is still not very interested in nursing unless she's just woken up from a nap (usually 2 naps a day). I make sure to always offer her breast before any solids.

Here's a typical feeding schedule for her:

6:30/7am - wake up and nurse (sometimes she's interested, sometimes not depending on how much she nursed during the night)

8am - breakfast, 3oz pureed fruit and porridge

10/10:30am - Wake from nap. 5oz EBM (this is the max. amount she will take from a bottle)

12pm - lunch (3-4oz of pureed vegetable with meat with 2 Tbsp baby rice)

2pm - Wake from nap. 3-4oz of EBM

4:30/5pm - I 'offer' to nurse. Most of the time she will refuse this feeding

5/5:30pm - dinner (3-4 oz of pureed vegetables with baby rice)

6:30/7pm - Nurse before bedtime

7pm - 7am - Nurse on demand

How can I encourage her to nurse more during the day? I want her to take up nursing in the morning and afternoon again, so I can begin night weaning at some point. I don't feel confident doing so unless she can increase her milk intake during the day.

 

[carang]

as your daughter gets older, she will gradually take more food and less milk. if you are only gone for 6 hours, sounds like she's not hungry. don't force-feed her. she'll eat/nurse when she is hungry.

from the look of your schedule, she's getting plenty of nutrition. you have her eating or nursing every 1.5-2 hours... that's quite often. and 3-4oz is quite a lot of food...i wouldn't worry too much.

 

[Gataloca]

Agree with Carang. When my baby was around that age, he used to eat or nurse every 3 hours.

 

[Koan]

Honestly I think your baby might be full from solids.

Offer to feed before solids. Try offering solids about an hour after feeding, so baby will be interested but not so hungry that she fills up. Solids are just for fun before 1, they shouldn't replace breastmilk.

Also, this is around the time when they like to crawl around and explore so feeding can be difficult when they are so distracted. I often give my 8 month old something to hold or play with while he feeds. Today he held a highlighter. ;-)

 

[evgreen]

She's usually much more interested in her solid food than nursing even if I offer nursing first and limit the amount of water she drinks. Sometimes lunch is at 1pm...depending on her nap schedule. I'm not worried about her going hungry, but I really WISH she would drink more breast milk during the day so I can cut out NIGHT FEEDS though which is basically every 3-4 hours during the night! I was hoping that by this age, she'd be waking up less at night, but this just isn't the case. The night feeding is my primary concern and any kind of advice regarding this issue would be greatly appreciated.

 

[carang]

sounds like she may be waking out of habit rather than need... have you tried to give her some expressed milk instead of nursing during a night feed? then you'd see how much she is actually drinking.

is it possible that she is comfort sucking at night?

 

[Koan]

Cut back on the solids then. Like I said, she might be filling up solids and that is affecting her milk intake.

Probably not much help, but feeding a couple of times a night is perfectly normal for this age.

 

[evgreen]

Babies just seem to do as they please, don't they?! Just when I was trying to rethink my feeding strategy with her, LO decides to take up her afternoon feed again and sleep thru the night again. I guess you could chalk a lot of things up to 'growth spurt' but then again, you never know...

is it possible that she is comfort sucking at night?

She really does take a full feed when she wakes up at night.

 

[thanka2]

I think we're all missing some crucial info. here. How big is your daughter? How much does she weigh? What is her percentile for weight? For my son, 5 ounces of milk would have been far too little for any feeding but with my daughter it was just about right. It totally depends on the child.

What I would do/have done is don't give a bottle mid-morning. It might seem counter-intuitive but by cutting out that "snack" you can increase her appetite for breastmilk.

Breastfeed upon waking on both sides while still in bed. I get up and go to work. She doesn't have a snack or bottle all morning.

Then at lunchtime, feed a bottle of breastmilk FIRST before she gets any solid food. For me, actually my daughter comes to nurse at lunchtime (she's nearly 15-months-old) and my helper has been told not to give snacks or other foods--except water for thirst (since it's humid now) in the mid-morning. We found that by giving her a bottle or "snacks" she didn't want to breastfeed when she was with me. Basically, I found that if I gave a bottle at mid-morning my daughter would only "snack" on milk at lunchtime and then have an appetite for solids later when I'm not around.

So, anyway, start "lunch" a bit earlier and give as much breastmilk as she will drink at lunchtime and then WAIT. She should pick up her milk intake by drinking more at one time and not "snacking." Don't follow on with solid food right away after she's had her lunch breastmilk feed. Wait maybe 1-2 hours after she has had breastmilk and then feed "lunch." She can nap after her lunch.

Also, another tip, we stopped bottle feeding with our daughter when she was 5-months-old. From then on she took breastmilk from a cup and it helped a ton.

Skip the after-lunch breastmilk "snack." Have her wait until you get home from work to breastfeed. She will be more in the mood to breastfeed if she hasn't had anything since lunch. Combine the after-work feed as a "dinner" feed. Once she has breastfed, WAIT. Then feed dinner.

Breastfeed "on demand" BEFORE you go to bed.

I don't think she will go directly to no night feeds right away but if you stick with this, it will phase out her need for so much nutrition at night. And I counted the number of milk feeds you are trying to get in with your daughter and the total comes to probably close to 6-8. Newborn babies usually take around 12 feeds/24 hours. It usually drops down to maybe around 8-10 until they're around 6-months-old. But, I found that at 8-months-old and above it really is not necessary to be breastfeeding 6-8 times/day. It's better to cut down the number of feeds and get more milk at once. From that point on my daughter was down to 3-4 milk feeds/day along with 3 small "meals"/day.

Basically, like Koan said, you have to make breastmilk the priority if you want it to be a priority. This means you always feed breastmilk first and then WAIT to feed any solids. Combine all the "snack feeds" so that your daughter has time to digest and work up an appetite.

This is what worked for me. Good luck!

 

[evgreen]

LO is only 6.5kg. She's in the 10th percentile for weight and 40th percentile for height. 5oz is about the max she can take from a cup or bottle and it's also the max I can pump in one session. Anyway, last night she took only 1 night feeding in a period of about 10 hours. This morning the helper said she's cutting her first two teeth! So I'm guessing her erratic feeding behavior lately may have something to do with teething as well.