Eating/ sleeping through the night

Noreen - posted on 11/08/2010

Debby - Um, I'm sorry, but nursing and a bottle are 2 WHOLE different things!! The WHO and AAP reccomend breastfeeding until age 2. My daughter knows what she needs. If she needs to nurse 8x during the day, and 2x during the night, then so be it! I am allowing her to self wean. (Which, the average age of self weaing WORLD WIDE is about 4)

Debby - posted on 11/07/2010

I can see where "bottle mouth" could be an issue Amanda whether it's acutally a bottle, a sippy cup or even in Noreens case where she still breast feeds. We would all like for our babys to be out of the midnight snack habit by this age.



I just read through the doctor's notes I get when my boys see the doc. E's first visit to our family doc was Tuesday and it says the same thing we've been discussing.



Ideally our 14 month olds should not be using bottles (or nursing) at this age. They should be transitioned to a daytime eating and drinking routine with a minimum of 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep. However, we caregivers know if that schedule is not established, night time feedings are still required and we should not deny our kids food at all.



My only other note would be make sure your girl is still getting her nutritional requirements through a follow up formula or a daily vitamin. Which I meant to mention in my earliest post. We can't rely on dairy milk to make up those meals. In my case, we're still using soy formula so E's nutrients are covered.



Another thing occured to me, you could try to up her snack schedule. So she's not interested in 3 meals on a set schedule, so you add a mid morning snack, mid afternoon snack, late afternoon snack and bedtime snack. Good snacks like fruit bits, Gerber bites stuff, E likes having manwhich and crackers after his late nap, while the boys do homework and I shred papers. Plus he muches on popcorn (no kernel hulls) while my hubby reads him books. Hubby even stated that more popcorn and juice means little E sleeps longer before he awakens to get that reserve bottle so could be our reserve bottle/sippy cup is on it's way out soon. \o/

Amanda - posted on 11/07/2010

bottles r not good for a child with teeth. end of story. ask your doc. anyone says a sippy cup "flows" too much is bs. the have nozzles in them so the child can suck out as much as they want they are toddlers at the age of 12 months and up not babies so they shouln't drink bottles.. ask dentists, look it up and from personal experience it rots their tetth and can shift them from sucking. thats my rant.

Debby - posted on 11/07/2010

So much for the NO T.H.U.M.P.S.

Sorry Robin, I hope you find a method which makes YOU happy, healthy and it's no one choice but your own. No one can make that decision but you. Your decisions are always good when you trust your own instincts.

Chatty - posted on 11/06/2010

NOREEN!

Noreen - posted on 11/06/2010

Ok, I understand the "breaking the co-sleeping" habit. But why risk him DIEING because he choked in the middle of the night?! Why not get up go to his room with the bottle, give it to him and sit with him until he is finished, then go back to bed?! I don't get it. I am also a mother of 3 and I am a huge part of my community. And I do do things differently then you! I breastfeed (no just putting bottles in my daughter's bed) co-sleep, cloth diaper her, wear her, etc. I am also a part of my son's PTO, a certified breastfeeding peer adviser, Navy wife, attend mops, coordinate play dates and home preschool my 4yr old. Oh, and to top it all off! We are packing and moving 3000+ miles! From the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. But yet, I would NEVER EVER EVER leave a bottle in my child's bed! I would rather not sleep at all then have a dead baby!

Debby - posted on 11/04/2010

well as I stated I know that what I'm doing is considered taboo or as the last two posters put it lazy... But I also explained that we're going to baby this child a little more because of his stressed out life.

Sorry to jack the post--- think about this, if you took on the responsibility for someone elses child and that child co slep with his drunkard father while his druggie mother roamed the streets. Said father gave him bottles and played with him during the night because he wanted that face time with the baby he couldn't get working 16 hours a day, which habit would you want to break first, bottles in bed, bottles during the day, or co-sleeping? We chose to break the co-sleeping habit first. It's a grueling transition for 5 people in my house, not just me or my husband who handled night time routines for our 2 boys. This also effects my 9 and 6 year old sons.

Forgive me for not caring for milk teeth considering I'm a van driver for my church, homeroom parent, den leader for 2 dens and assistant pack leader, I work from home, take care of 3 kids and a huge house. See if you would do anything different if you were me.

Again I'll state, this is my choice of how I'm going to baby this child because of his circumstances.

Chatty - posted on 11/04/2010

Seriously, what is with all the "text type" lately. Type proper English people! ugh.

Farida - posted on 11/04/2010

debby, i agree with noreen that sounds lazy. if u decide to feed a baby at nite pliz do it yoself as they could choke. get up n feed da baby or find away to break da habit of nite feeding. ma son is 13mths n has slept thr' out da nite since he was 6mths old i feel really lucky.

Noreen - posted on 11/03/2010

Debby- why put the extra bottle in his bed? Why not get up and give him that extra bottle if he needs it in the middle of the night?? I don't understand the logic of doing what you do. Just seems like a lazy convenient way to parent. Just saying.

Debby - posted on 11/01/2010

We're doing the ultimate no no here just to get us through this phase...we put an extra bottle in the bed with little E as well as putting him to bed with a bottle. It's a hard habit to break but with all the changes in the poor guys life (moving away from his own druggie mother and drunkard father to our house) we're going to "baby" him a little more, within reason....with the bottle he will self soothe and put himself back to sleep instead of getting one of us up.

Chatty - posted on 11/01/2010

Racquel, my daughter, Roxanne, was down to one bottle a day (around dinner time) by about 15 months and at 17 months, she just decided one night that she didn't want it anymore. That was the end of that.


I agree with you, and I have no problem with children using bottles or pacifiers etc. past a year AS LONG AS parents don't abuse them and use them properly. Oral hygiene is extremely important even in young children.

Racquel - posted on 11/01/2010

My son still wakes up once a night for a bottle. It's good to see all the different experiences here. My husband and I just discussed allowing our son to CIO but we just haven't tried yet. We used it to get our son in a bedtime routine but for some reason, we are hesitant to do it in the middle of the night. He can sleep through the night so if he's waking, I tend to think that he is hungry. I think it's a good idea to try a heavier meal before bedtime like Sabra and others suggested.
Amanda, no, my doctor has never mentioned that I must take my son off the bottle right now. Just because he uses one at 13 months doesn't mean he will still be doing it at 4 years old. It's silly to suggest that we're all setting our kids up for rotten teeth and dragging around a bottle to preschool. Also, my son cannot physically use a sippy cup well. He chokes when using them because the flow is too much for him. He sips from a straw cup throughout the day but I'm not going to take away his bottle until he can drink from a cup without choking.

Kate - posted on 10/29/2010

My boy was doing the same and sad to say the only way to kick the habbit is to stop giving bubs a bottle at night when she wakes. it seems as tho they will cry allnight but they dont. i fond that the only way to get my boy to eat better was to not give in. if he wouldnt eat the he wouldnt get anything else.
(not saying i starved him) i also found things that he liked best were good during the day and then used at dinner as incentive to eat what he was givin. he loves youghurt so i would give it to him mixed in his porridge at breakfast, then some for lunch and have it infront of him with some fruit when he was having dinner and make a point that if he eats din dins he gets his yummies. it took a couple of days but he eats good now.
could also be that perhaps she is not ready to table food.try reverting back to baby food. it could just be that shes not ready for the bigger stuff yet

Amanda - posted on 10/27/2010

well I presonally don't know what this is like. my son has been sleeping through the night since he was 4 or 5 months old. and e has only ever waken up 2 times before in the night. and that was just a couple weeks ago. and the 1st time it was because he took a BIG poopie and the 2nd was because he wasn't feeling good and had a fever. i also havent given him a bottle since he was about 8 months. and I never put him to sleep with formula/milk its always been water. have you tried giving them something to drink rather than milk? thats a bad habit to have because it causes teeth rot. also. your doc hasn't told you to take them off the bottle? a person from my churc never forced that on their son and he is 4 years old and wont take a sippy cup. so the bottle is now rotting his teeth. i give my son formula or milk during the day in his sippy cup.

Bridget - posted on 10/26/2010

Each family situation is different- its not for other people to judge how others run their lives/families. I am fortuante enough to stay home with my daughter, which allows me many freedoms that working Moms dont have. My daughter has be VERY difficult with her nighttime sleep. She have many nights where she is up every hour. A doctor really laid into me, telling me its unhealthy for her not to sleep for 12 hours straight, and that her problems are actually my fault. So for a while we tried everything. We tried the No Sleep Solution, Cry It Out, co sleeping, etc....I could go on and on.... In the end nothing worked. I got to see another doctor and he assured me that some babies just take longer to sleep through the night, and if I could afford to be patient and get up with her then we were doing just fine.
She finally started sleeping through the night last week- on her own. Previously when she woke I would give her a bottle, or cuddles, and put her back down. She adjusted on her own.
What types of foods will your daughter eat? Ive found that foods like mashed sweet potatoes help her sleep much longer than finger foods like carrots and chicken. Does your daughter like cereal, oatmeal, mashed sweet/russett potatoes? Maybe you could try feeding her some heavier foods close to bedtime and see if that makes a difference.

Good luck!

Sabra - posted on 10/25/2010

I am going through exactly the same thing 13 months old and still waking up to eat. you need to get her to eat more during the day but the only way to do that is to stop feeding her at night. I'm not saying it will be easy and it might take awhile but try slowly decreasing the amount you feed her at night and giving her that food during the day. I find it also helps if you give a more hearty food (like oatmeal) shortly before bedtime then it helps to stretch out the night aswell

Jennifer - posted on 10/25/2010

Clearly for you it is.

Noreen - posted on 10/25/2010

Maybe I am being judgmental but isn't that part of the package deal when becoming a parernt?

Jennifer - posted on 10/24/2010

Oy! Noreen - Unfortunately some of us have to work and getting up 4 times a night is not compatible with a job. If momma is miserable, baby is miserable.
My daughter was going the same thing and something had to change. We started off by cutting down her feedings by sending my husband in, then after a few nights of that we let her cry. I thought for sure she was going to cry all night but, it was only 6 minutes. I read Ferber's book before we did it. All I can say is it's been a wonderfeul week of her sleeping from 7pm to 5 am - then I bring her to bed to nurse until 6am when we get up.

Chatty - posted on 10/22/2010

:)

Noreen - posted on 10/21/2010

No, thats not what I am saying at all. I just couldn't imagine doing that with my children. That's all I was saying :)

Chatty - posted on 10/21/2010

....and you somehow think that's what I'm suggesting, Noreen?

Noreen - posted on 10/21/2010

I can not imagine refusing to nurse Abby at her 1 and 5am feedings. Not only would she be miserable, but so would the rest of the family. I can hear her belly growl when she wakes to nurse. I feel sad for those baby who are left to CIO alone in their dark crib hungry. :(

Chatty - posted on 10/21/2010

The only way to increase her appetite during the day is to refuse nightime feedings. I'm not saying that you SHOULD but if you want to, then you need to forgo those night time feeds and get her to settle without them. After a few nights she'll start eating more during the day to sustain her.

You could also try giving her a bottle or a snack before bed.

Just for the record, it's completely normal for a 13 month old to still be waking through the night and it's not the last of the sleep pattern disruptions. Teething, new milestones etc. all get in the way and her sleep patterns will continue to change.

Noreen - posted on 10/21/2010

The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elisabeth Pantly! I SWEAR by her! You can order her book off of amazon for $3 used! I am reading it now and it makes a world of difference! There are 2 of them, the orginal and the toddler/preschooler one. The orginal is better then the toddler one for this age group.