Questions About Waking Up

[Mom to M&M]

Hi there! My DD (9 weeks, one day) generally wakes up once overnight to eat (we don't DF because it was disrupting her and making her wake more frequently). Other than the amount of time that has elapsed and the coughing cry if she gets it, how do we know she is definitely hungry and should be fed? Same thing for when she wakes in morning...

Next, we often have to wake her from naps - at least from some of them. She is often cranky about being woken and sometimes still wants to sleep. How is the best way to transition her into being awake rather than just giving her the bottle right away, even if it is time to eat? Or should we wake her a few minutes before it's time to eat to allow her to really wake up and be hungry?

She is on a 4 hour schedule, despite her young age. This is because she has cereal in her bottle (doctor's orders for her reflux) and because she can stay awake for 1.5 hours at a time and likes long naps...

Thanks!

[Nikki~Nathan&Danielle]

I would think at 9wks it is still very normal to be feeding once in the night - particularly if you're not doing the df.  Tracy suggests by 4mths they no longer need a feed in the night but to have the DF and then drop the df around 7-8mths.  So it would be normal to have a night feed up until that time if you're not DFing.  However, if the time of wake up in the night is fluctuating it will generally be hunger.  If the time is regularly the same, you can try resettling without feeding (ie pat/shsh) if you wish.  If you use a dummy, you could try using that as well.  I am still feeding my dd in the night at 6mths (we don't df).  The other method you could try is to offer less in the bottle and see if that helps reduce the overnight amount, but up the day bottles slightly. 

As far as waking up grumpy, do you keep things quite low key for a wee while to let her adjust - maybe hang out in her room and just talk to her.  Also, if it takes 15min for her to adjust, there's no problem if you're not feeding on the designated hour, but 15mins later isn't going to affect your routine too much.

HTH

[Mom to M&M]

Thx Nikki, that does help. It's generally not the same time for the middle of the night waking. Last night she ate at 7, was asleep by 8:10 and slept until 2:45 (!) with just a brief stirring at 2. Then she ate a full bottle, and was back asleep at about 3:45 and slept (albeit a bit restlessly) until about 7:15 this morning. Was wonderful.

So it does seem the night waking is from hunger and that is fine. Just wasn't sure when we should try to slightly reduce the amount of food in night bottles.

Will try to do that with waking from her naps. Thanks!