night feeds

The number of night feeds needed is unique to each baby. Generally, once a baby is 3 months and 12 pounds, they're fully capable of eating enough during the daytime hours that they don’t biologically need to wake at night to eat. They’re not only capable of it, but it’s what is ideal for their circadian rhythm, digestive system, etc. And so they are naturally oriented towards this, but we have to go with their natural bent. They use the dark hours of the night to rest, grow, develop and give their digestive systems a break, and night feeds can interfere with that.

However, every baby is different. In my approach, we chart a baby’s overall milk intake and sleep patterns to see how many night feeds are necessary and advised.

But as with everything, you are the parent and the decision is yours. A good sleep consultant, even if they didn’t recommend keeping a night feed but you felt strongly that you wanted to keep one, would fully support that and give it a try. Often, it works out just fine and doesn’t negatively impact overall sleep, especially if just keeping one.

When we drop night feeds, we see the overall weekly milk intake stay the same. They simple transfer the calories they used to take in the night to the daytime meals, which become larger. The process is called reverse cycling and babies are able to do this from about 6 weeks of age.