My 5 month old son has recently almost doubled his food intake. We typically feed him formula (usually 5 oz per feeding) and have recently started him on rice cereal and several days ago, sweet potatoes. As it turns out, he loves eating from a spoon. He has been sleeping through the night since 6 wks, but now wakes up (sometimes twice) to eat. This seems like an awful lot for a growth spurt!
Have you spoken to his pediatrician about it? He'd know best and if all is well maybe just suggest a heartier diet for him. There might also be a vitamin deficiency that his body is craving for. Whatever it is, with a quick call his pediatrician can give you the right answers.
One thing to consider is how long has he been waking up at night for feedings? My daughter started sleeping through the night at about 10weeks but every once and a while she would start going through phases where she would want a bottle at night and this lasted about a month or so before she started sleeping through the night again. So maybe this is just a phase and it will pass?
Also, it may be time to introduce another food. I also started with sweet potatoes after giving her the rice cereal and once she started on the more flavorful foods, the rice cereal simply wasnt' enough for her anymore. I usually had to mix it with a fruit like bananas or pears.
And lastly I would suggest giving him a feeding, either bottle or food right before bed time and see if that maybe lasts him longer. You may already be doing this and in that case I would like to think this may be just a phase!
I never gave my daughter anything other than formula in a bottle because I wanted her to understand that the solid foods came from a spoon only, until she started feeding herself of course. It helped me out a lot in preventing her from becoming to attached to a bottle. But if you want to try the cereal in a bottle it's totally up to you, I have heard that it is more filling, and may last longer in the tummy!
Hope this helps! Good Luck!
I would ask your pediatrician b/c I'm not one, but it sounds like he's hungry! I have a 5 month old daughter (and a 2 and 3 year old) and she's eating 3 6-8 ounces bottles a day breakfast, lunch, and dinner and a stage 1 of food at each meal. So, cereal in the morning, a fruit, and a vegetable per day. Once my kids got up to 20 oz of formula a day I start them on food b/c I think it's healthier than filling them up with fat from formula. It's just a suggestion. Good luck!
hi , iwould say check with your peadetrician...this could be nothing i hope, but this could be serious ,if he is gaining wt and otherwise not always hungry/thursty this would be just a growth spurt... good luck.
In my opinion, if he's been sleeping through the night since he was six weeks old, he's not waking up to eat now. Listen to his cry when he wakes up. Is it high pitched? Does it sound like something hurts? Maybe he's teething, ear infection, etc. Maybe you could give him more formula during the day if you really think that he's hungry. Hope this helps. :)
I have four kids and each of them were chubby babies. They all started out around 7.6lbs and by five months they were averaging 20 pounds. People say my milk is straight cream. They do like to eat, and I feel its fine since it's all healthy food. I feel people get into trouble when the "real" food comes and they then cut out the veggies and feed them pizza and fried foods. My kids have thinned out by two years old when they become really mobile. The waking up during the night might be a habit they are starting. My seven month old is doing the same. She had been sick and got off schedule. Now that she's better she's in a bad habit of wanting to eat every three hours. I'm going to start giving her water in a bottle to throw her taste off. That usually makes it so it's not worth the effort to wake up for just water. That's something to try atleast. Good luck!
He is old enough to learn how to sleep through the night - one of the most important things we can teach our children! I know it's hard, but let him cry it out for a few nights. Check him to make sure he is clean & dry, then lay him back down. I assure you, it will be a hard few nights, but he will get the picture in no time & you'll all be sleeping through the night.
I'm certainly not an expert here. My kids didn't have formula or food that young. But many kids, including my own, stop sleeping so long at that age. They wake up for feedings at that point. Sounds totally normal to me. Also, starchy foods like that work very differently. Breast milk has much more fat and food probably effects their blood sugar and they wake up hungry. NOt sure how formula works. Good luck!
I had the same problem with my son about that age. He is going through a growth spurt and needs a little more now than he did before the cereal and sweet potatoes. What we did was increased the amount of formula during the day, fed him his cereal and then his jar of food. Then right before bed, we fed him a bowl of cereal along with his bottle. It really helped. Try increasing the amount of cereal you give him, and I would go to the stage 2 jars of food for dinner only for now and slowly increase it when he starts eating the whole jar in one sitting. I would increase only by one to two ounces at a time, to avoid him not eating all of it. If after a few days he is still hungry all the time, increase it a little more, until he is totally satisfied. Don't worry about him gaining too much weight right now. As my Pediatrition said, "when he starts crawling and walking and then running he will wear off the extra weight and it will all work out as long as he is active (then take him to the park daily and let him run!)". It is very healthy for babies to love new foods!
Just experiment and think that at least he is eating. Good luck!
I would say it's just a phase. Increase the solid foods you're giving him. Growth spurts are pretty nasty on the little ones. Research shows they can grow nearly an inch in a 24 hour period. Give in for a couple of weeks and see if it passes. If it doesn't, you may have to just pat his back to help him get back to sleep when he wakes in the middle of the night. Good luck!
S.,
My daughter is 7 months old and started sleeping through the night at about 2 months and now wakes up usually once or twice a night. I am lucky becuaseif I put her pacifier back in her mouth she usually goes right back to sleep. This phase started when she started solid foods. I try to get her to go back to sleep without feeding her but sometimes I just breastfeed her and she goes back to sleep. I have started giving her more for dinner and this has helped. Good luck and let us know when the phase passes.
Maggie
Give the baby a thick cereal bottle right before bedtime he will sleep thru the night. Thick as in you have to cut the nipple a little bigger for him to get it out. My daughter started eating table food at six months, smashed up vegetable, macaroni and cheese. Then bedtime I did the cereal bottle and she was good for the night. Just a suggestion everyone does different things?
You may want to make his cereal a little thicker to fill him up.
