No, despite what lots of people might tell you, giving your baby formula or solid foods will not help them sleep through the night. Waking up at night is normal for babies. Babies – just like adults - wake for lots of reasons at night and it’s not always because they are hungry. They might wake up because they are too cold, need a nappy change or simply help getting back to sleep. As adults we have learnt to go back to sleep ourselves (although lots of us still like sharing a bed with someone) but sometimes babies still need a little help.
Lots of people think that how you feed a baby might affect how often they wake up. Although in the early weeks of life babies who are formula fed do sleep a little longer, once they are past a few months old there is no difference in how often babies wake up. However our research shows that both breast and formula fed babies over six months old still wake up on average once to twice a night. We also found that solid foods also won’t help babies sleep more. So no, what you feed them will not affect how often your baby wakes – babies just wake up and that’s ok! You can read our research here
Even if babies were waking up from hunger, breast and formula milk have very similar levels of calories in them so switching to formula will not make much difference. If your baby was hungry, solid foods really won’t help them. The best thing you could do would be to give them some extra milk – breast and formula milk have far more calories and energy in them that typical first foods.
- Read our blog on normal infant (and adult!) sleep
- Find out more about why giving your baby solid foods early won’t help them sleep
- We have also made an animation of our findings that you can watch here.
- Watch a summary of our research on ITV Wales news
- Read a blog in the Huffington Post about why your baby waking at night is normal