My daughter has started to wake up during the night for food and has stopped sleeping during the day except for a few 20 min naps. She used to sleep for anything up to 10 hours but lately she goes down later, get up earlier and is feeding a lot more often. My wife can not meet her demands for food and we do not want to give her formula milk. Can we start to introduce a spoonful of baby rice a day to help her using breast milk?

A The recommended age for introducing solid foods is 6 months old. Your daughter is slightly too young to advise you to do that yet. It is common for breastfeeding women, with 4 month old babies, to become busier during the day and not be quite so conscious of their diet and fluid intake.

You could encourage your wife to have the extra 500 calories needed to sustain breastfeeding as well as plenty of fluids.

It is still important for your wife to rest through the day when she is tired, it is useful to have 1 day a week where there are not extra demands on her time.

To avoid using formula milk your wife could express some breast milk (3 – 4oz) on a morning, when the milk supply is good, and you could feed this to your daughter in the evening to give your wife an extra rest.

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