Can you reduce night feeds without sleep training?
If your child is over 4-months and you would like to reduce some night feeds, you may have heard the only way to do this is to sleep train.
This is false.
You don’t need to sleep train to reduce night feeds. You can gently and respectfully reduce feeds without even thinking about sleep training.
In this mini-masterclass, I share how you can begin working on reducing night feeds.
Why is your child waking and wanting to feed?
When we know why your child wakes through the night to feed, we can address this and work on reducing those night feeds.
Is your child hungry? If they’re hungry, they will want a feed, but why are they hungry? Have they had enough calories throughout the day?
Have they had a strange dream? Dreams are strange! Imagine being a baby and waking from a dream. That may cause some upset when waking from a dream.
Remember, feeds are not just calories. They are the ultimate form of comfort for your child.
Are significant changes happening? When your child goes through big changes, they will go through a sleep regression. If you’re returning to work, moving house, have visitors, etc., sleep may get wonky, and your child may want to feed.
Can we reduce night feeds?
We can, but it’s not a quick fix.
If your child gets a longer stretch of sleep at the beginning of the night (3 or 4 hours), you may want to feed for this first wake-up.
If your child wakes after an hour or two, think about whether they are hungry. Did they feed well throughout the day? Did they miss out on a feed or have a shorter feed during the day? If they had fewer feeds, they would want to make up for this and need extra feeds during the night. If they’re hungry, feed them.
If you don’t think they’re hungry, don’t feed them. Let’s go through the support ladder, giving your child the support they need.
Start at the bottom of the ladder.
If your child doesn’t soothe, you can always add more support.
You don’t need to spend long on each step; you can quickly move through the ladder.
When you move through the ladder, you’re not overhelping your child; you’re giving them the help they need.
Have a maximum time you’ll try to help back to sleep without feeding.
This can be as short as 20 minutes or as long as an hour. Decide how long you’re going to try beforehand. Don’t aim for an hour if you know you’ll only manage 20 minutes, set yourself up for success!
Visual cue for your feed
If you have a visual cue for your feed times, it doesn’t matter if you try to help your child back to sleep but reach your feed time. I like to use a nightlight or dim lamp as a visual cue for a feed time. When you read your feed time, turn the light on and feed your child. They got fed because the light came on and not just because they woke. You can use this light for all your night feeds.
Don’t worry if you reach your feed time.
It’s not a problem if you reach your feed time. The feed was later than it would have been, and stretching the time between feeds is another way of reducing night feeds. The longer we go between feeds at night, the more feeds are pushed into morning time.
As your child becomes more used to this, they’ll have a much easier time falling back asleep without the feed.
Start with just one feed a night.
One feed is manageable and not overwhelming and is something you can build on.
