How do we help our toddler to sleep through the night?
My 14-month old daughter is no longer breastfeeding, and sleeps happily in her bed, although it is still in our room. But she wakes up around three times at night, and as far as we can determine it's because she is hungry. A bottle of milk formula is a necessity to get her to sleep again.
We tried getting her used to not eating by making the formula slowly weaker, but that just means she wakes up quicker after each bottle. We do try as hard as we can to make her eat as much as possible during the daytime (especially just before going to bed), and she seems to eat a reasonable amount of food during the day, so now I'm at a loss at going forward.
Ideas? Anyone who has had similar experiences and was able to solve it?
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First you get her on a schedule, then you adjust the schedule to fit your needs. At bedtime you want to try to feed her a little bit more than she drinks during the day, so she can go longer between. In my experience, the easiest way for parents and baby to get on a schedule is to set your alarm clock to wake up a half hour or so before your daughter typically wakes up hungry. Just like we usually don't wait until we're ravenous to eat, babies are usually happier eating before they're hungry enough to cry about it. It's a lot less traumatic and she might not even wake up completely, which helps inculcate the idea that night time is for sleeping. That might also mean she eats less and might need to be fed a little more often at first, but then when she is accustomed to not having to wake up to demand being fed at night, you can slowly adjust the interval longer and longer.
FYI, you should never dilute baby formula.
Move her into her own room.
At 8 months of age, our daughter was in our room and still breastfeeding. She would wake up 2-3 times a night, from what we could tell was hunger. (She'd eat and then go back to sleep.) We are fairly quiet sleepers and don't really move around our bed so much, so it wasn't like we were making noises which would wake her up.
I had to start work again, and a disturbed sleep wasn't going to be good. We solicited advice and were told that moving her into her own room would probably get her to sleep through the night. I didn't really want to do that because I don't believe in crying-it-out and was afraid that now I just have to go to another room to go feed her.
But alas, we moved her out. The first night, she slept 11 hours without waking up. Not even a squeak. Now two months later, she still sleeps in her own room, about 8-10 hours continously. She tosses and turns in her room sometimes, but keeps sleeping. She doesn't cry. She doesn't yearn for food. If she is in our room, she just tends to wake up more and gets distracted by us and wants to be snuggled.
So, based purely on experience, I'll highly recommend moving her into her own room. If she makes a sound or two, don't run to her. Wait about a minute before you let her see you / walk into her room.
Good Luck.
Edit: In terms of food, we feed her dinner about 30-40 minutes before bed. She wakes up quite hungry in the morning.
Answering my own question here:
What worked was getting her to eat more. The main trick in doing that was to give her one thing at a time. in reverse order of desirability.
So, if we had spaghetti and meatballs, we would first give her some vegetables to eat, then some meatballs and lastly the yummy creamy pasta. This way she would eat vegetables until she wasn't desperately hungry, then meatballs until she was not hungry at all, then pasta until she was stuffed.
This way she ate more during the day, went to bed stuffed (as she first ate, and then had milk) and would not wake up during the night.
I have two thoughts.
The first is well put by Swati .. get the kid into her own room.
The second is to adjust the feeding schedule, making the last feeding a big one shortly before bedtime.
She should be sleeping through the night at this point. She needs to be in her own room and you MUST find something else to sooth her to sleep, she should not be hungry at night any longer and you are encouraging her to wake up by feeding her. I am a believer in crying it out, but it does not sound like you are ready for this. It could be night tremors, a bit early but possible. Maybe speak to your pediatrician about this possibility.
We had a similar situation with my 14 month old, and it was definately a sleep association rather than actual hunger (although it was with the breast, rather than a bottle). After figuring out it was a sleep assocaition, we just cut off 1 feed per few weeks or so (ie. first wake of the night we did not offer milk), and offered comfort instead (cuddles from Dad). Although she did not really like this (she cried, said 'no' asked for mom etc), eventually, she stopped waking for that first feed. When that happened for several nights/a few weeks, we would cut out the next feed, until she was eventually night weaned. This did take some time but it was less intrusive then other methods we've seen, and involved only minimal crying (and no crying alone).
You could try a "hungry baby" formula. (You should never weaken (or strengthen) formula feeds, by the way.)
This page gives some information about common sleep problems:
www.nhs.uk/Planners/birthtofive/Pages/Commonsleepproblems.aspx
By the time your child is six months old, it’s reasonable to expect them to sleep through most nights. However, up to half of all children under five go through periods of night waking. Some will just go back to sleep on their own; others will cry or want company. If this happens, try to work out why your child is waking up.
For example:
Is it hunger? If your child is a year or older, some cereal and milk last thing at night might help them to sleep through the night.
Are they afraid of the dark? You could use a nightlight or leave a landing light on.
Is your child waking up because of night fears or bad dreams? If so, try to find out if something is bothering them.
Is your child too hot or too cold? Adjust their bedclothes or the heating in the room and see if that helps.
It's important to keep night and day different; you might need to get some good blackout blinds.
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