10 month old still waking at 4am for feed

[Kalamiphile]

Is this usual? If so when is she likely to give it up. Stayed with my daughter to do the 4am feed last night and felt like she will neve let it go!! Guzzled it down, zonk back to sleep. Wakes about 2 hours later at 6 and has porridge at 7am. Has last feed at 7pm as she goes to sleep.

I have forgatten more than i remember and it would probably be 'out of date' now anyway!:'(

[Fuschia]

Not unusual - See the link I posted re sleep yesterday

She is coming into light sleep and the milk j

Helps her resettle / when she wakes she realises she is hungry

[supergolden88]

Certainly not unusual. My daughter kept waking up and breastfeeding till she was 14 months and we sleep trained her. She did not NEED the milk but it was how she was accustomed to going back to sleep and her body was probably used to having a feed in the night. It was a sleep association problem - I created it by picking her up and breastfeeding her EVERY time she woke up in the night (and she woke up at least twice, sometimes a lot more).

You need to determine if the night waking is due to hunger or a habit and sleep association issue. Regardless you can phase it out by giving less milk gradually (or breastfeeding for shorter time) till you drop it. Assuming the baby is eating well during the day and has a nice feed before going to bed then she doesn't need the milk in the middle of the night (unless perhaps there's illness / teething etc).

I dropped the middle of the night feed cold turkey with my daughter when sleep training at 14m. She cried a lot the first night (not because she was hungry but because of sleep training) but the second night she slept through for the first time ever. Did the same when sleep training my son at around 5 months (but kept the dreamfeed at 11pm). With my son especially dropping the night feeds meant he was finally a bit better at taking milk/breakfast in the morning.

You dont have to do controlled crying if it's not for you - by phasing out the feed slowly hopefully there won't be any tears.

[mrs f]

Have you thought about giving her a dream feed / waking her at 10/11 for a feed so she has enough to keep her going until 7 without waking in the night... ?

[Kalamiphile]

My daughter would need to put her alarm on to do that as she is in bed 8.30/9pm!! Good idea in principle though

[Moos]

Took me a while, but my other half now does the 10.30/11.30 feed, while I go to bed early... could your daughter ask her partner to do the same?

[mrs f]

Yep same here, I express in the am & mr f gives it to baby f @ 10 whilst I'm tucked up in bed... But once baby f is sleeping through we may share this as 11-7 is 8 hours so enough to get by on... I'd rather feed before I go to bed than be woken @ 4 am! Mr f sometimes comes to bed early & gets up at 10... Still nicer than 4am I'd think :-)

[Kalamiphile]

Again good suggestions, sadly my daughter is a loan parent, and is working. I did suggest the dream feed, the groan said enough, I think she feels if she goes to bed early enough she gets uninterrupted sleep until 4, also she is not convinced that feeding her at 10/11pm will stop her waking. Maybe I will give it a go, next time I go to give her a nights rest

xx

[chantelle]

my son was up at least twice in the night until around 11 months-1 year when he finally started to sleep through. I think becoming fully established on solids really helped. Plus they simply develop routines and it's up to the parent whether to accomodate that or try to "break" it. I personally would try to break the habit if I was confident my child was getting plenty of nutrition, and by 10 months they should be. I would stop offering the 4am bottle - maybe replace it with water and your granddaughter will quickly realise it's not worth waking up for. :)

yes there may be tears but only for a couple of nights.

[hellosailor]

Kalamiphile I have to do the dream feed at 10:30 as my baby won't take a bottle from her dad, but have recently stopped staying up for it, and now go to bed at 9, sleep for an hour and a half and set alarm for 10:30, do 20 mins feed then back to sleep by 11ish. I find this easier than if I didn't do it and had to wake in the early hours to do a feed instead. (mind you sometimes have to wake in the early hours to re-settle her anyway, even though she doesn't need feeding!!)

[Kalamiphile]

Thank you all for your ideas and experiences. It all sounds so exhausting, I know in my memory it was but like birth pain, have actualy forgotten it (until i do the 4am feed that is!!)

Poor girl is so tired with working and caring for beanbag on her own, buggies on buses, trying to get shopping every day, to tired to organise internet, cooking for bb etc, maybe best for me to give her the ideas and then she will make her own choices.

xx

[Fuschia]

http://www.parentingscience.com/baby-sleep-patterns.html

[srisky]

Hi Kalamiphile

Sorry for the long post...

Has your daughter tried NOT feeding her baby at 4am? If her baby is feeding well during the day and is gaining weight normally then maybe he/she is waking up at 4am out of habit and is now used to having milk to settle back to sleep but doesn't actually NEED it.

I say this from personal experience with my 5 month old, who used to have a dream feed at 11pm and sleep through to 4am before waking for a feed. This I could handle as fortunately I'm not a lone parent. However, she started waking every 2h during her 4 month growth spurt, which was fine, but then she continued to do so for 4 weeks afterwards. Everytime she woke I would automatically bf her and she seemed to drink well and settle fairly quickly back to sleep. Soon I was so tired that I didn't 'care' whether she really needed to be fed, I just wanted to do whatever it took to get her to sleep quickly and if that meant bf then that's what I did.

However, I decided I could not function like this long term so the last couple of nights I decided to go cold turkey with the midnight-6am feeds. She had her usual dream feed between 10-11pm. When she woke in the early hours and I didn't feed her she would start crying hysterically but I would just pick her up and rock/jiggle(!) her and she would calm down very quickly, start smiling and cooing and within a couple of mins she would be rubbing her eyes at which point I would put her down to sleep (took no more than 30mins in total from crying hysterically to falling asleep). She next woke up 3h later but this time it was much quicker to settle her back to sleep (approx. 15min).

At first I was reluctant to try this, as I felt I would be depriving my baby of food when she seemed to need it. The fact that she settled down relatively quickly and slept soundly for a few hours reassured me that she wasn't actually hungry or in need of milk overnight even though she seemed to feed well during these times. Certainly, during the day there is no distracting her when she is hungry!

It's early days but I'm hoping that this works and it may help your daughter.

Good luck!

p.s sorry if others have already mentioned something similar

[srisky]

Sorry, Supergolden and Chantelle, I see you both already mentioned something similar :-S. Glad it worked and it gives me confidence that I'm doing the right thing!

[Fuschia]

http://www.parentingscience.com/infant-sleep-problems.html

Relevant research