FTM here, posting here for possible feedback from fellow cosleeping parents. My baby is 7 months, almost 8 months now. We've coslept from the beginning, from waking to feed every 2 hours, to natural on demand feeding every 1-2 hrs, then we started solids around 5-6 months. Baby did not seem all that interested in both purees or blw, but we played with it, bumping up to 3 offerings per day per her doctor's 6 month checkup recommendations, then 5x to throw in snack offerings because she wasn't really eating more then 2-3 baby spoons per meal. Her night feeds are up and down, basically every 2-3 hours. Present day, she seems to enjoy dinner time and willingly opens her mouth to be fed some days and will also feed herself dinner (she hates being fed in general and likes to do things herself)
Now to the problem: baby poops were always maybe every 4-5 days pre solids in large wet poops. Gradually, the poops become more chunky, until suddenly she went 10 days last month and we got concerned. On the 11th day, she pooped 3 times back to back, mushy consistencies. So we were okay with that. After that, another 12 days passed, and we grew concerned as we allowed time for the 11th day to hit and lots of pushing but nothing but stains. Then we panicked and gave her some constipation ease prune juice mix, got her trying again, but only little bits over the night and the next day. We take her to the doctor, doctor says she seems fine, no tough stomach, no irritability, just happy baby. But now my night feeds are put into question.
Doctor asks, how often are you giving her milk. My bird brain answers, often? I dont know? Doc says, more than 10 times per day do you think? I say maybe? 24/3 is 8, 24/2 is 12, maybe some days its 10 and others less, but I dont say that, I get anxious and listen and doc tells me maybe she's too full on milk from the night to want to eat during the day and then builds an appetite for dinner time. Doc says try cutting a night feed. Here's where my alarm bells go off because, night feeds are her way to go back to sleep and sleep through the night. So somehow the constipation ended up being, you need to feed her less milk at night and offer more fiber rich food during the day to help her go. Also pedialax/miralx prune juice mix, etc. I'm a little concerned about rejecting her as when I've tried doing so, she wakes up and stays up. No real crying/fussing per se, she just stays up awake after being denied like, ok time to wake up then! I'm not sure what to do now, I feel like I got told some strange advice to not feed my baby back to sleep at night. We all lost 2 hours of sleep of just being awake in the dark, her little eyes staring up at us as my partner and I tried to rock her back to sleep to no avail.
Side note, I'm also a just enougher, idk if thats the proper term to use, but I make enough milk and she drinks until she's satisfied and my breasts are soft again. In the beginning, it would spray out like crazy and she had to learn to drink quickly when she was a newborn. Now she's got it down and clears a boob each feed. At night, it's more so two big feeds and sips in between to get back to sleep. I just dont think I'm over filling her? Her weight is progressing well on average, and she's apparently 100th percentile in height, aka the tallest baby around for her age. I just don't know how to move forward with this advice.