Night weaning & DD cried on-and-off from 3am-5am -- Can she really be hungry??

[eepie]

My DD is almost 9 months old and we have been doing sleep training quite successfully - in 1 week we have gone from wakes & feeds at 10.30pm, 1am, 3am and awake for the day at 6am to her now sleeping through until 3am.
At 3am she cries and seems to settle herself with less than 5 mins of crying...goes quiet and sometimes babbles to herself....then silence for maybe 20mins...then she wakes again and cries again for under 5 mins. I leave her because 5 mins was my point that I'd go in a say "time to sleep", pat her and walk out. Then she falls asleep for 10 mins and wakes again crying....this goes on and on for an an hour until she is waking more often like every 5 mins, and crying for longer than 5 mins...so I go in and say "time to sleep now" and walk out. Often she will settle really well after this as if she is reassured. Then wakes 10mins later again (just as I am dropping off to sleep again!!) Last night this carried on for 2 hours but never much more than 5 mins crying at a time and lots of 'self settling' but I was exhausted as obviously I couldn't sleep in those 2 hours. At 5am she finally fell asleep for good and then woke again at 6.20 for the day and I fed her.
So we have been trying to night wean so not responding with feeding when she wakes at 3am...but why is she doing this intermittent crying and settling thing for so long?? Is she actually hungry? Shall I just feed her at 3am and she'll then sleep through until 7 maybe?
I have been being really consistent and the earliest I will feed her is 5am so maybe it's just taking a while for her to 'get it' that there is no feed at 3am...what I don't get is why is she then up for 2 hours ??!?! Do I just need to stick at it or should I feed at 3am and save myself the battle and wait til she drops the 3am feed on her own? I'm also reluctant to go in and feed her at 3am as she settles herself and doesn't usually cry for long enough for me to get out of bed, put my hair up, get my cardigan on and walk into her room ! But then if I feed her after 1 hour of intermittent crying, she'll learn that if she cries for an hour then she'll get fed ?? confused !

[Littlef00t]

It's a toughie as it could be a variety of reasons. I reckon if you've dropped several feeds quite quickly she could be quite hungry at 3am as she's habituated to getting the calories.

How many nights has she been doing this as keep going for days is worth it I reckon.

[mewkins]

Just to say I feel your pain. It's a tricky stage and I remember with my dd it went on for a while and had to take emergency formula to bed with me for some months. Are you ff or bf? With ff I think that I too had a cut off (eg.would only feed after 3am) but would water the formula down every few days until it was just flavoured water. Then she dropped that feed. Not sure what the bf equivalent is. I have read that there is absolutely no point sleep training a baby who is genuinely hungry and the kind of on off crying like that suggests she is actually hungry. Also you want to avoid early waking at all costs as that's a very tricky thing to get away from so my vote would be to keep that feed if needed and try to up the daytime milk/food for a while. Then hopefully she will drop it of her own accord.

[girliefriend]

Do you offer water? Is her nappy saturated?

My dd used to wake at about that time but often a drink of water and quick nappy change was all that was required for her to go back to sleep.

I would be really reluctant to start giving milk at that time tbh.

[JellyMould]

Sounds to me like she is hungry, especially if she isn't waking at the earlier feed times. Dropping 3night feeds at once is quite a big change. Try a 3 am feed and see if she does indeed sleep till 7.

[Grantaire]

There might be any number of reasons why she's waking but if it was me, yes I'd give a feed then. It's quite common for a 9mo to still have a night feed and if she's been reliant on several night feeds, suddenly having nothing is probably very hard indeed for her.

At 9 months they quite often wake at night due to a developmental leap. It's the one just before they are walking and it disrupts sleep. Then there's teething, too cold, nightmares, habitual waking, hunger, thirst etc.

I'd try a feed and see what happens. Might be the solution for now and you've taken a massive step towards night weaning if you're getting through to 3am. You can gradually stretch it or stick with it or whatever feels right if it works.

[Cooper11111]

Hi, when I sleep trained my ds he did exactly the same. I would say don't feed her, the reason she is likely waking more often at this time is because she has been in a deeper sleep earlier in the evening and is a little more refreshed. It took about a week to ten days for these frequent early morning wakes to go and he went 7-7. Feeding her would flip it back to a point where she isn't hungry for her morning bottle/breakfast- it is healthy for them to learn that this is the most fulfilling meal of the day. I may bet shot down for saying this, but it's what worked for us and definitely what would be suggested as part of of sleep training.

[eepie]

Thanks for responses :-) we dropped the night feeds over about 3 weeks... 3 feeds in a night was a 'bad' night (ie not very often) but more usual was that she fed 2 x per night. So really with the sleep training I dropped it to one feed at midnight...then she stopped waking for that on her own and went all the way through until 3am (2 nights actually she slept all the way through with no feed, waking at 5am or 6am) That's what made me think she didn't need a feed anymore, so then I tried not to feed her at all and see what happened....the on and off crying is what happened so yeah maybe she's just adjusting.

I kind of feel like Cooper 1111 might be right....she seems much more alert and sometimes babbles to herself instead of cries....so maybe you're right and she's actually not really tired enough arg ! Maybe once she starts walking or crawling more this will change. This last week she has been waking at 4 or 5 am and so I have been feeding with one boob (small-ish feed) and putting her back to sleep. Sometimes she goes back to sleep for a tiny bit, sometimes for 2 hours. I think maybe she is only capable of doing 10 hours in one go of sleep....or if I stick with it maybe she'll learn to stay asleep until 6.30/7 which would be great ! I don't want to create early waking so maybe I dreamfeed at 3am for a bit??

Anyway as of last night the sleep training has totally gone out the window as she has a bad viral infection and is really sick...so that could have been it as well...that coming on. Last night she still slept for 6 hours in a stretch though after she had some baby neurofen ...before that she was waking whimpering every 20mins poor little one. And then after I fed her at 4am she slept through until 7.20 which is great. She's been sleeping so much today thought she can barely stay awake so I don't know what that means for the night time...Any advice on getting back on track after an illness ??? Hope she is better soon, so horrible to see her so weak.

[eepie]

Also in response to Q's I am breastfeeding and we have been giving her a formula top up in a sippy cup as part of bedtime routine as well just to make sure she is not hungry in the night ! She has taken well to it & loves the sippy cup so that's good for if I decide I want to stop breastfeeding but at the moment I don't.

I don't offer water as I think this would just wake her up more or confuse her...she loves playing with water and spitting it out of her mouth and smiling, it's quite a phase at the moment so worried she'd just be like "WTF is this Mummy PFFTTTT" and then be more awake IYSWIM ...Also her nappy is never very wet in the morning if I haven't fed her in the night. It used to be really full by morning with the night feeds but she didn't care. I think she may also have got into the habit of doing her morning poo at like 4 or 5am if she is awake...WHYYY??? (judging by her nappy when I change it in the morning if often looks like a poo as been there a little while - she NEVER used to poop in the night except as a newborn) There's not much I can do to stop that I don't think ! But that would be something that may keep her awake cos she hates having a dirty nappy. I guess I could do a nappy change at 4 or 5am and MAYBE she'd go back to sleep after that.

[mewkins]

You sound like me! This week sleep has gone to pot and realised on sunday that the poor thing wasn't well- a chest and ear infection so he is now on antibiotics. I say get through the illness properly and then pick up where you left off. We have the problem that he hasn't been eating well so that kind of throws things off as i don't know if he is hungry or not at night.

[mewkins]

And yes ds also has a 5.30 poo every morning. He is happy to stew in it till get up time though (it is usually fairly'firm').