Awake at 4am every night........habit or hunger??

[gemtreacle]

My 4 month LO was sleeping during the night until she got a cold and it really disrupted her. Now she's started to wake every night at 4am. i try the dummy for a while but she tends to go only 30 mins and then i feed her and she sleeps straight away. Is this a habit waking or hunger? I ask 'is it hunger' because i hear her stomach rumbling, which to me says feed her. I gave her 7oz last night hoping it would fill her up but it didn't.
Any tips?

[anna*]

I'd say if she's waking again 30mins later and sleeps straight after a feed, she's waking from hunger rather than habit. If she's waking at exactly 4am, you could try Wake to Sleep at 3am, but my hunch is that she may wake up at 4.30 instead! It's very common for them to need to feed in the night at this age, and there's a growth spurt at 4 months too, so you may find she stops waking once the spurt is over. How long have the wakings been going on for?

anna
x

[aimeeL]

Can I piggy back on to this question??  I got on to post a new thread this morning, and then saw this subject title, and thought, "THAT'S ME!"  Except my LO is 3 1/2 mo...  Anyways - we, too, are dealing with a cold, but since this 3-4 a.m. waking was happening before the cold, I don't think it's sickness related, and am hoping to find a solution so that once Liana IS cold-free, we can "fix" it.. =)

So we're on a fairly predictable 3 hr EASY (am starting to think of inching our way towards 3.5..)

E/A - 6 a.m.
S - 7:15 a.m.

E/A - 9 a.m.
S - 10:30 a.m.

E/A - 12 p.m.
S - 1:30 p.m.

E/A - 3 p.m.
S - maybe a catnap at 5-ish p.m.

E/A - 6 p.m.  (bath, etc)

E - 8 p.m.  (am still doing a cluster feed)
Sleeps right after this feed

DF - 10 p.m.

So I've tried moving the DF up and down an hr, but she is still waking anywhere from 2:30 - 4:30 a.m... It's not consistent enough for me to think it's habit, but I could be wrong.. Same as the earlier post, though - I give her her paci, and she'll take it, but will be stirring again within 10-15 min.  She WAS sleeping 7-8 hrs - which is why I'm a bit confused.  I don't mind doing one night waking still, but I'm not sure if it's something I need to work on since she WAS sleeping longer..  She's not eating a whole lot at that one waking - maybe 5-10 min? (I exclusively BF) - and normal for her is about 15-20 min, but then again, I don't encourage her to eat, too.. no wiggling or jiggling... in fact, sometimes, I stop her after 6-7 min - because we HAVE to start our day at 6 a.m. (we take her to work with us), and I want her to get a full feed in then... She almost always goes to sleep RIGHT away after this feed, though - even if it's only a few minutes long.. which is why I'm worried it's habit and not hunger...?  But then again, the # of hrs she's sleeping is not consistent... like last night, I did a late DF at 11 p.m. and was sure she'd go till 6 a.m., but instead, she woke at 4 a.m. - only 5 hrs!  The night before, DF was at 10 p.m., and she woke at 4:30 a.m... so anyways - I go back and forth between habit and hunger...

Any thoughts?  Thanks for letting me add my question on... =)

[anna*]

Hi there aimee, if it's somewhere between 2.30 and 4.30 I'd say it's definitely hunger. A habitual waking will be at near enough the exact same time every night. At 3.5 months it's totally normal and expected to have at least one night feed in addition to the DF, and their feeding needs change all the time. It's great that she's going 5 hours between feeds at night!

Just as another observation, I'm thinking that a 14 hour day is quite a lot for a little one thing young, how about trying to put her down to sleep after her bath and 6pm feed?

anna
x

[gemtreacle]

its been going on for about a week now. it was 3.45am last night and i put dummy in, which lasted for 30 mins. she gets noisy again and i think she's spat dummy out but she still has it in. After a feed she sleeps straight away until about 8am.Maybe it the growth spurt then. Getting her weighed wed so it'll be interesting to see what she has done over 2 weeks.

[anna*]

Yeh, definitely sounds like hunger. I would just feed quickly and resettle her as quickly as possible.

anna
x

[aimeeL]

Thanks so much for the quick response, Anna...

I HAVE tried to put her down earlier, but she hates it.. I used to fight her every single evening, and finally just decided to reconcile myself to the fact that we just have a little night owl.  She used to actually not go down until the DF - which made the DF more of a "wide-awake" feed... but in the last 4 wks, she's been sleeping from the 8 p.m. feed - so I'm VERY happy about that... she does nurse to sleep for that one.. so I'm not even sure how I'd try to get her down earlier at this point, without moving that feed up or dropping that one altogether.. =(