The ol' Rice Cereal in the Bottle trick

Just taking a moment to record my secret concoction. You've al heard putting rice cereal in their night time bottle helps in getting them to sleep through the night, and if you're like me and research everything to death before doing something, you've probably read that most doctors dispute this trick as the reason that babies begin sleeping through the night. I guess they believe that with or without the addition of rice cereal to the bottle, the baby would have slept through regardless...

Well, here's my experience...two weeks ago, Amelie woke up once in the night for a feed, either at midnight or 3AM. But the point is, she awoke every night, and required a feed to get her back down. Then a week ago, I began experimenting with adding rice cereal to her night time. On the first night I added a teaspoon of rice cereal to her normal 5 ounce bottle, and then added a tablespoon of water to make sure it wasn't too thick. It was a lot of work for her to drink the bottle regardless of the water added, because I still was using the Level 1 nipple. That night she woke up as usual. The next night I doubled the concoction, changed to a number 2 nipple, and low and behold she slept through the night for the first time ever...awaking at 5AM after a 7PM bedtime. Not bad.

But I figured, why night try a little more and see if we can get to 7AM? So the next night, I added three teaspoons of rice cereal (one tablespoon) and three tablespoons of water. On that night? She awoke again at 3AM, only this time not hungry, but seemingly gassy and uncomfortable. So we went back to 2 teaspoons of rice cereal per bottle with 2 tablespoons of water to dilute...and she has slept through the night 5 nights out of the last 7. I think it's working!

Oh, and a side note....why didn't I just add the cereal and skip the water? Two reasons...when doing this with Alia, I added the rice cereal without adding water the first time, and she got constipated. I also noticed it was too thick to fit through a number 1 or 2 nipple.

So that's all...just recording a trick that seems to be working so that when my friends with babies younger than mine ask, I'll be able to remember what I did. Because otherwise? I don't remember what I had for breakfast!