Coffee Catchup 27th May with Dorothy Waide

Hi Dorothy, can you please give me a brief outline of what my 8 month old's daily routine should be.
Thanks ever so much, Leanne,

Hi Dorothy, yes I am fully breastfeeding. Was trying to give him a bottle of formular in the evening, but it is not going very well at all.He started solids at 6 months.
Thanks, Leanne.

Hi Dorothy, can you please advise on settling technique for our 51/2 month old boy. He can settle himself as he does so during the day for his daytime sleeps.

When it comes to bedtime at night though he is a completely different child. We have a bath, some dinner (farex baby rice), a wee play / story, feed, burp etc then into bed. As soon as he in his cot though he just screams, and screams, we have tried the dummy, but he just spits it out or screams with it in. We have been waiting 10 minutes then going in to settle him, but he does not respond to settling in the cot. When we pick him up to settle him, then put him back once he is happy, he just starts all over again, usually resulting in me rocking him to sleep after a couple of hours as It is heartbreaking to hear him so upset.

He does not like being "engulfed" as you talked about yesterday, he just arches his back and fights me all the way to the bank! Your advice for a more pleasant nighttime experience for him would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Dorothy,

Thank you for your time yesterday. It was a really interesting discussion and I learnt a lot. I attended the afternoon session and I asked a question about getting my 8 month old son to sleep through the night. He currently wakes 1-3 times. I would be fine with waking once, but the other times are hard! Knox is breastfeeding still, he is on 3 meals a day and has some formula too. His bed time is usually 8-8.30pm so that he gets some time with his dad after work. Our day usually starts about 8, give or take half an hour. He self settles sometimes but when I get up to him it's because he's really crying and I have a no crying policy (grizzling ok, crying not). He is a really happy contented and healthy baby, he only cries if there is actually something that needs fixing for him. Do you have any suggestions of things I could try to get him to sleep longer at night?

Thanks

Jo

Hi Dorothy,
Thanks for such an informative session.
My query is about feeding amounts and progressing through weaning.
I have a 6 month old baby who is now 9.5kgs and we started him on one meal (evening meal) of baby rice at 4.5 months. Since starting him on solids, i have changed his evening meal to include veggies but havent really increased the overall quantity. I'm not sure how much i should be feeding him either, please could you advise me what his feeding amounts should be and how best i progress through the weaning process with him. I start back at work part time in a few weeks so I have also been moving him into more formula feeds so that I only need to express twice during my work day.

Our feeding/ sleeping routine (give or take half an hour) is:
8am breastfeed
9.30 nap
10.30 breastfeed
12 nap
1pm formula
1.30 nap
3.30 breastfeed
4pm nap
6pm formula followed by baby rice with some pumpkin or other purée veg mixed in. Approx 1/2 tbsp rice to 1 tbsp purée
7pm bath time
7.20pm Breastfeed to top up before bed if needed.
7.30 bedtime.

Since attending your session, I have added breakfast of 1 tbsp baby rice. I have also managed to extend his awake time out to two hours and he falls asleep within 5 minutes instead of the 45 minutes it used to take him. Unfortunately this hasn't extended his nap times at all as he seems to be a regular 45 minute Napper with the odd 1.5 hour sleep thrown in randomly.
Looking forward to hearing from you with how his feeding routine should be working.

Many thanks,
Alex

Thanks Dorothy for a great session, I am writing this with my wee man (just over 4 months) sleeping in his cot already rather than being fed to sleep on me during the day!

My question is when do we enter the room to help them resettle? I know we should initially leave them to try and learn to resettle themselves but if they don’t, do we wait until they are fully awake and crying to resettle them, or while they’re still just a bit drowsy and whingy? Our son Ryan can take a good 15 minutes or more of whinging before he fully wakes so it seems a good opportunity to help him back off to sleep during this period. He was tongue tied so always fed to sleep, I’ve broken that habit during the day but during the night he still does this, should we be (gently) keeping him awake/waking him to put him back into his cot during the night?

Many thanks
Pip

Hi regarding the Millet you can purchase from Huckleberry Farms - the brand is Holle Organic. I have not used the brand that you are asking me about. If you don't have a Huckleberry Farms in CHCH you can purchase over the internet.

What i recommend re night waking is to ensure if you are feeding that it is for hunger and not for comfort. So the first step would be to look at her daytime routine and then work from there. If she is catnapping then the first thing would be is to teach her to resettle during the day so that she learns how to do it at night time.

Yes you do need to respond to her but allow her some time to find her own sleep. THis isnt about leaving her to scream in the other room but to see if she is actually awake or falls back to sleep without you intervening.   A lot of times we have picked the baby up and are feeding before we are actually awake or the baby is awake.

I would suggest using the cupping and see if that helps - you can do this when resettling in the day if she is not having long naps.     

And yes how you resettle is up to you - you can just hold her back to sleep or sit with her until she goes back to sleep.

Hi without knowing your room temperature I would suggest that you remove some of the blankets straight away.

THen, my next question would be is what is the temperature of the room and then I can advise what the baby ideally should be reading.

Hi the cup I have the most success with is the NUK first feeder and the bottle I have most success with is the Evenflo bottle.

Teething products i use are Kava drops and teething drops from Quintessence and also another alternative product is vibrucrol.   Sophie the giraffe is a great teething toy but there are lots out on the market place.

Thanks Dorothy. I tried the cupping technique and it worked, yay! Might need to work on my arm muscles though lol. Re the Millet, there is no Huckleberry Farm in Christchurch and they charge an extortionate $17 for delivery here.. making it $36 for 250grms so way out of my price range.
Many thanks for Monday and all your valuable advice. Kathryn.