Anyone else's LO do this?

JM712 · August 2011

DD goes to sleep around 8pm most night but then is almost always awake 30-45 minutes later to eat one more time before she goes down for her long stretch (4-5 hours). It's not that big if an inconvenience to me since I am still awake anyway, but I am just curious why she always does this and what I can do to eliminate this extra waking up.

MaggieB0406 · August 2011

My DD does! But she doesn't always go back down right away. She used to take a cat nap in the evening and go down am hour or so after so I think I'm putting her down at her cat nap time. Which needs to be her bedtime. Tonight I'm trying to ignore her. She's just woke up and is sucking on her hands and blowing raspberries. I want to see if she'll go back to sleep on her own. We're going to make the transition to the crib soon so I'm trying to not jump at every noise. If your LO cries can you just give a paci? Sometimes that works for us in the middle of the night.

MaggieB0406 · August 2011

Ok fail...she cried and I nursed her bank to sleep. Maybe it'll get better with more nights but hopefully someone else has a suggestion.

misssurly · August 2011

My LO wakes 45 minutes after being put down around 8:30 but just needs reassurance to go back to sleep ... not another feeding. Dumb question, but are you sure she's hungry and not just looking for comfort? Maybe try to tank her up earlier in the night and sneak and extra feeding in to see if that helps.

handsonthewheel · August 2011

Mine does this at least a few times a week and nursing her is the only way to get her to go back to sleep, as well. She takes a full feed each time, so I do think it's a combination of hunger and not knowing how to settle herself on her own...

kgail11 · August 2011

handsonthewheel:
Mine does this at least a few times a week and nursing her is the only way to get her to go back to sleep, as well. She takes a full feed each time, so I do think it's a combination of hunger and not knowing how to settle herself on her own...

THIS.

vanfox · August 2011

misssurly:
My LO wakes 45 minutes after being put down around 8:30 but just needs reassurance to go back to sleep ... not another feeding.

This, though he doesn't always do it. I nurse him to sleep before I put him down for the first time and I think if he gets really knocked out, he wakes up and is confused about where he is. If he's in a lighter sleep, he stays down until he really needs to be fed again. It only takes me about 2 minutes to resettle him and I usually don't even need to pick him up, which definitely wouldn't be the case if he were still hungry.

freeerin · August 2011

My LO does this too every night. He'll eat at 8:30pm and then will doze on the couch with us until 9:30pm, when he eats his last meal. He consistently STTN from that point until 7:30am the next morning. We've tried putting him to bed earlier, but he wakes up like clockwork at 9:30 every night. We've always taken the "let the baby lead" when it comes to sleeping (and he's an on demand feeder too) so we're going with the flow.

missamERICA · August 2011

JM712:
DD goes to sleep around 8pm most night but then is almost always awake 30-45 minutes later to eat one more time before she goes down for her long stretch (4-5 hours). It's not that big if an inconvenience to me since I am still awake anyway, but I am just curious why she always does this and what I can do to eliminate this extra waking up.

Yes! my LO does this every night...his 8pm "nap", but then he's asleep by 10:00-11:00 and sleeps about 7-8 hours.

janjag · August 2011

In the last 7-10 days I've started a more consistent and predictable bedtime routine. Previously he'd been going to bed at 9-10 and waking in the morning at 9-10. We're moving toward earlier bedtime/wake-time - 8pm to bed and hopefully 7-8am wake-up. He seems to want this and it feels like the right age based on what my girls did.

That said, he doesn't cooperate with the bedtime quite yet. He might wake from his 3rd nap (catnap) at 5:30 or 6pm. He usually nurses then, and at around 7:15 I take him in his room to get ready for bed (story, sponge bath, nurse). He falls asleep around 8. Wonderful. But maybe 20 or 40min later he's up needing comfort. Sometimes he needs to be walked around 3 times. For the most part I do not feed him again. In fact DH will go in instead of me. If DH thinks he's hungry then I'll go feed him a little more.