Night feedings

Feeding your baby in the middle of the night may help her to return to sleep. But chances are that your child will keep waking up if she continues to receive feedings in the middle of the night. Your child's stomach and brain can become "trained" to need food in the middle of the night. Night feeding can cause other problems: too much weight gain; tooth cavities; and bronchitis; as well as trouble falling and staying asleep. If your baby is older than 4 months after due date, he or she is old enough to sleep through the night. To help your baby sleep through the night without being fed, the nighttime feedings need to stop, gradually. You can do this by:

• Decreasing breastfeeds by one minute per night or bottles by one ounce per night. If you use this strategy, nighttime feeding should end in one week.
• Trying to increase the amount of time between daytime feedings to about 4 hours. If your baby is fussing, try to distract her by playing for 10 minutes before feeding her. This will decrease her need to be fed on demand.