Experiments in babyrearing

As the middle-of-the-night wakings have become more frequent in recent weeks, we're trying a new thing for feeding time. We're holding out on his solid food until around 8PM, and then instead of giving him water in his sippy cup we're filling it with half a bottle's worth of formula. The idea behind it is that a full tummy of food will last longer than a full tummy of formula.

Last night, it worked quite well. I put him down to bed around 9:30, and he's still asleep as I write this from work. We'll see how it goes from here.

The other new trick we're doing is this: I commented a couple of days ago that a middle-of-the-night bottle is not a good habit to have. So what we're doing now is keeping an empty bottle upstairs in his room - the idea is that if he demands something we'll give him water in the bottle instead of formula. He'll get something in his tummy, we'll not load him up with excess calories overnight, and it'll be better for his growing teeth (sleeping right after a bottle is not Considered Good).

I don't have 100% confidence in this idea yet, but it's worth a spin. The big thing we're working on with this is trying to keep him from getting into a regular pattern of midnight waking - if a pattern sets in it'll be really difficult to break. Better to try stuff now.