Will more food help your baby sleep?

Just as there is no evidence to suggest that your baby will sleep better at night if you start solids earlier than five or six months, there is no evidence to show that the more solids your older baby eats, the better your baby sleeps at night.

If your baby is in the second half of the first year of life, and gaining well according to her growth charts, but waking excessively at night, this is usually because her body clock settings are disrupted.

The research does tell us that as the first year of life passes, baby sleep needs decrease. This can result in excessive night waking if your little one's sleep regulators, the body clock and sleep pressure, gradually become out of sync with your own sleep regulators, and also with day and night.

In this situation, working through The Possums Sleep Program, to do a reset of your baby's body clock will make sleep much more manageable again, though it might take a couple of weeks. Your little one is still likely to wake at night, but will have returned to normal night waking, which is usually a great relief for parents.

You can find out why it's important never to pressure our little one's around milk or food intake here.

Recommended resources

Is your baby (< 6 months) with sleep problems hungry and needing to start solids?

Do breastfed babies have daytime sleep problems because of hunger?

About conditioned dialling up, and how to prevent it, if possible

Selected references

Borowitz SM. First bites - why, when, and what solid foods to feed infants. Frontiers in Pediatrics. 2021;9:654171.

Dalrymple RA. Earlier introduction of solid food is associated with improved sleep in infants. Archives of Disease in Childhood Education and Practice. 2020;1015(4):251-252.

Perkin MR, Bahnson HT, Logan K, Marrs T, Radulovic S, Craven J, et al. Association of early introduction of solids with infant sleep: a secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial. Jama Pediatrics. 2018;172(8):e180739.

Felder JN, Lee K. Association of early introduction of solids with infant sleep. JAMA Pediatrics. 2019;173(2):194.