Night waking due to hunger or habit?

[acowle]

Hello,
Just wondering if anyone has any insights into my 6 month old daughter (although 1 month premature so developmentally 5 months) NW's.  A few weeks ago she had started sleeping through the night - she was being fed for DF at 10.30pm and then sleeping to 6-7am ish.  Night sleep has since deteriorated again and I'm not sure why.  She now only wakes once in the night at about 2.30am  but when she does she is often awake for hours. She usually starts off by playing in her cot, or moaning and then gradually gets more and more worked up.  I use PUPD once she starts crying but it can still take hours to settle her.  Once she exhausts herself and falls asleep again she will stay asleep till 7.30am when i wake her (she would sleep for much longer if I left her). 
Last night I tried feeding her incase she was hungry, she took 5oz and was still wide awake for over an hour afterwards (although not crying).  She takes 34oz of formula during the day along with 2 tablespoons of porridge with fruit puree in the morning and 2 tablespoons of veg puree at 5ish.  She sleeps for about 3 hours during the day (roughly an hour and a half in the morning and in the afternoon and then a 15 minute cat nap at 4.30ish). She goes to bed at 7pm. 
I don't want to regress to getting her into the habit of night feeding again if its not required and wondered if anyone had any thoughts on this? Does this sound like hunger waking her? I would be so grateful for any ideas! Thanks for reading.

[Erin M]

Wide awake in the MOTN sounds like not enough A time during the day.  I'd say she should be getting between 2-2.5 hours of A time right now -- preemies can be somewhat tricky in that some seem to follow A times for their adjusted age and some for their chronological age.  What does your daytime routine look like?

[acowle]

Thanks so much for your post Erin, much appreciated!  Here is her routine at the moment (roughly)

A 7.30 (often have to wake)

E 7.45 (5oz bottle and 2 tablespoons of porridge, although have increased to 7oz last couple of days to try to prevent hunger at night)

S 9.50

A 11.30

E 11.45 (7 oz)

S 13.50

A 14.35

E 15.15 (6oz)

S 16.15

A 16.45

E 17.00 (1 tbs veg puree with 2 tsp baby rice)

E 18.15 (7oz)

S 19.00

E 10.30 (7oz) often wakes around 10ish hungry so will feed then. very easy to settle after feed.

[Erin M]

She might be ok with that first A time because you're getting a good nap, but I'd try to push the A time before the second nap to 2 and a half or maybe 2.45 -- hopefully that will get you a longer nap -- and you can possibly try to skip the cat nap some days by putting her to bed early.

[acowle]

Just to update you, I have managed to stretch the A time on a couple of occasions before her pm sleep which has extended the sleep so thanks for that advice. On other occasions it hasn't worked but as she seemed quite happy when she woke I've assumed she maybe didn't need anymore sleep. 
I decided to try dropping the dream feed to see if that helped with night waking and for a few days it did as she was waking about 1ish for a feed and then slept through for the rest of the night. however the last couple of nights have been awful again.  She has been waking at 2/3ish and transitioning through from being happy but very awake, then moaning/crying, then more settled but awake, then finally falling asleep by herself for about 15 minutes then waking again and cycle above starts all over.. and this carriers on for nearly 3 hours. She usually drifts off by herself at 5.30/6ish.  I'm not allowing her to sleep in to compensate during the day and i'm still making sure she sticks to schedule above.   She is drooling a bit and everything is going in her mouth at the moment. She also has a constant snuffle at the moment. I'm not sure if the night waking sounds like teething? She seems quite happy during the day and has no difficulties with sleeping then. Anybody have any thoughts? Gave her teething powder and paractemol last night incase it was that at the start of her being awake but it didn't seem to make any difference.

[Erin M]

She is drooling a bit and everything is going in her mouth at the moment. She also has a constant snuffle at the moment.

This does sound a lot like teething.  Some babies don't show any signs of it during the day, but are miserable at night.  The thing with giving meds when she first wakes is that she's already up so she'll have some trouble falling back to sleep.  Some ladies try giving them later in the night (like at a normal dream feed time) -- some LOs will take them while pretty much asleep -- so they'll sleep through the rough patch in the middle of the night.