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

E

evgreen

Registered User
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.
 
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.
 
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. ;-)
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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...

carang said:
is it possible that she is comfort sucking at night?
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She really does take a full feed when she wakes up at night.
 
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!
 
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.
 
One other note. When my son got to be about 8 months-1 year old he was really easily distracted at feeding time. I solved this problem by turning off all the lights in the room--getting it as dark as possible and not talking or making any sound. It helped him focus on the task at hand. When my daughter started to crawl away during breastfeeding times at that age I would pull her back to me and say, "It is milk time." Sometimes she would fuss but I was really consistent with this and now she knows that when mama says it's time to drink milk, it is and she doesn't put up a fight at all. Sometimes I would have to pull her back to me 2-3 times during a feed but by not giving her the option of getting down and playing I established that milk time is milk time.
 
OK i'm officially calling a (partial) nursing strike. I spent the entire weekend trying different things. I took up some of everyone's suggestions (quiet, darkened room, nursing necklace, etc.). First feeding of the morning hasn't been going well, she will only nurse for 3-4 minutes and that's it. It doesn't help that she wakes up at 4am wanting to nurse. I tried to hold off the 4am feeding this morning in hopes that she'd be more interested in her morning feeding later. Well I struggled with her for about an hour until 5am before I finally gave in to nurse her. :-(

I pushed back the mid-morning feed by another hour so that there was 1 hour between the milk feed and lunch (around 11/11:30) hoping that she'd be hungrier. No dice. She nursed for maybe 3 minutes and when I tried to put her back on my breast she actually CRIED - like red faced angry crying. She ate her lunch as usual. In the afternoon, I got rid of the 2pm milk feed all together and nursed her right after she woke up around 4pm - this was successful and mostly due to the fact I think I caught her just as she was waking up and she was still very groggy and sleepy. She nursed as usual right before bedtime and 2-3 times thru the night. *sigh* Seems like she only wants to nurse when she's half-asleep or asleep.

I think much of this may be induced from teething. I hope this strange behavior doesn't last long.
 
have you considered that she is just an efficient feeder?

my kids by that age, never took longer than 5 or 6 minutes to feed.
 
evgreen said:
OK i'm officially calling a (partial) nursing strike. I spent the entire weekend trying different things. I took up some of everyone's suggestions (quiet, darkened room, nursing necklace, etc.). First feeding of the morning hasn't been going well, she will only nurse for 3-4 minutes and that's it. It doesn't help that she wakes up at 4am wanting to nurse. I tried to hold off the 4am feeding this morning in hopes that she'd be more interested in her morning feeding later. Well I struggled with her for about an hour until 5am before I finally gave in to nurse her. :-(

I pushed back the mid-morning feed by another hour so that there was 1 hour between the milk feed and lunch (around 11/11:30) hoping that she'd be hungrier. No dice. She nursed for maybe 3 minutes and when I tried to put her back on my breast she actually CRIED - like red faced angry crying. She ate her lunch as usual. In the afternoon, I got rid of the 2pm milk feed all together and nursed her right after she woke up around 4pm - this was successful and mostly due to the fact I think I caught her just as she was waking up and she was still very groggy and sleepy. She nursed as usual right before bedtime and 2-3 times thru the night. *sigh* Seems like she only wants to nurse when she's half-asleep or asleep.

I think much of this may be induced from teething. I hope this strange behavior doesn't last long.
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Question: Do you or have you co-slept and breastfed that way? With my daughter, even now, sometimes when she's not feeling well (teething, cold, over-tired) the easiest solution is just to let her latch on and then both of us go back to sleep.

My son was really like that--wouldn't breastfeed unless he was really tired, asleep or half-asleep. Any other time he would stiff-arm me and would have none of it. I only breastfed him for six months, largely due to this.

I think you gave in a little too soon for the afternoon meal. If she misses one solid meal she's not going to have any ill-effects from it. But, if she drops that afternoon nursing/milk intake that could kind of be a blow to your breastfeeding. At least for me, it would definitely affect my supply in a negative way. I think you'll have to hold out a little longer and then just keep offering the breast. I found that in order to keep breastfeeding my daughter and not have to be up all night the morning and noon feeds were the most important. Have you tried cup feeding instead of using the bottle? It takes about a week for them to get the hang of it but my daughter was a pro at drinking from a cup by the time she was about 6 1/2 months old.

If I was in your situation, I would even consider dropping out solid foods altogether in the afternoon and in a way "force" her to go back to milk and breastfeeding. Babies can only eat what you give them. She might put up a fuss for awhile but she will get hungry enough to eat. I would still do a breakfast meal and dinner as long as she had breastfed or had a good milk intake for the day.

And, for sure, teething really made both of my kids fussy--the younger one even more fussy than the older one.
 
carang said:
have you considered that she is just an efficient feeder?

my kids by that age, never took longer than 5 or 6 minutes to feed.
Click to expand...

Well, she's much more efficient at eating when she's asleep. When she refused to nurse yesterday, I pumped and fed her the milk instead. She finished all of the milk! So, something about nursing is really switching her off.
 
thanka2 said:
Question: Do you or have you co-slept and breastfed that way? With my daughter, even now, sometimes when she's not feeling well (teething, cold, over-tired) the easiest solution is just to let her latch on and then both of us go back to sleep.

My son was really like that--wouldn't breastfeed unless he was really tired, asleep or half-asleep. Any other time he would stiff-arm me and would have none of it. I only breastfed him for six months, largely due to this.

I think you gave in a little too soon for the afternoon meal. If she misses one solid meal she's not going to have any ill-effects from it. But, if she drops that afternoon nursing/milk intake that could kind of be a blow to your breastfeeding. At least for me, it would definitely affect my supply in a negative way. I think you'll have to hold out a little longer and then just keep offering the breast. I found that in order to keep breastfeeding my daughter and not have to be up all night the morning and noon feeds were the most important. Have you tried cup feeding instead of using the bottle? It takes about a week for them to get the hang of it but my daughter was a pro at drinking from a cup by the time she was about 6 1/2 months old.

If I was in your situation, I would even consider dropping out solid foods altogether in the afternoon and in a way "force" her to go back to milk and breastfeeding. Babies can only eat what you give them. She might put up a fuss for awhile but she will get hungry enough to eat. I would still do a breakfast meal and dinner as long as she had breastfed or had a good milk intake for the day.

And, for sure, teething really made both of my kids fussy--the younger one even more fussy than the older one.
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My daughter seems to really like the cup and has been drinking from a cup for some time now. She's been on bottle strike too several times and will usually take milk or water from a cup instead when that happens. I have been partially co-sleeping with her for the past few months. If she wakes up too early in the morning, I usually bring her in bed with me.

Anyway, night issues are a bit different. Still have to tackle this daytime nursing strike and hope to see some improvement this week. I found some good teething nursing strike related suggestions on Kellymom.com and will try them out today (e.g. icing her gums before breastfeeding).
 
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