Would you give your nearly 3yo food at 4.30am if he said he was hungry and breastmilk didn't seem to be cutting it for him?

[mawbroon]

DS and I co sleep from when he wakes at night (random times) usually until the morning. He normally breastfeeds for a couple of minutes and then turns over and drops back off to sleep. This suits us both for now, so no probs there.

However, last night he woke at 12.30am and fed on and off until finally at 4.30am he started wailing that he was hungry.

The logical thing to me at the time seemed to be to give him something to eat, but in my 4.30am foggy brained state, decided that no, he would think it was a big laugh and would then ask for food every morning at 4.30am for ever more. So, he then fed on and off, until I could stand it no more at 5.45am when I sent him downstairs with DH to eat breakfast. He had some ready brek, then the two of them came back to bed for another couple of hours.

What would you do?

Going out soon, so will check back later.

[anastaisia]

The body is 'programmed' by the neuro-endocrine system.

The body is 'programmed' to respond to stimuli, the time of day is only one of those and probably has less impact than internal stimuli do.

So if a hungry person has low blood sugar the body releases adrenaline and nor-adrenaline. Is it any wonder they can't sleep WELL until they eat and their blood sugar is stabilised? The internal circadian clock isn't going to be affected by a one off-one night waking.

People who work nights are a bad example because they are responding to a long term change in pattern, where they are trying to 'reset' the circadian clock in order to work shifts but can't make a permanent change to their patterns because they will have days off and holidays and will want to spend time with people in more 'normal' patterns. Hardly the same as responding to the body signalling the need for a snack.

[AbbeyA]

Night duty wasn't a good example.
However no healthy 3 yr old wants to get into the habit of a night time snack. One off won't hurt but if it is more frequent than twice a month I would suggest a visit to the GP. There is a huge problem with childhood obesity in this country, not surprising if children are 'grazing'in the night.
For a healthy body you need:
a healthy diet
exercise
clean water
sufficient sleep.

Even if they are hungry I think 3 years is old enough to be told that 'mummy is sleeping and it isn't fair to expect her to go and make snacks'.

[juuule]

The children that we did this with grew out of it. They are not overweight and they didn't have a medical problem.
It was a phase and it passed of its own accord.

[AbbeyA]

I suppose that for the OP the answer is that if she is willing then there is no harm.
However we are all different-I don't make snacks in the night for anyone!
Luckily DSs are old enough to get their own, but I don't think it has ever crossed their mind.
DH wouldn't be happy as he gets up at 5.30am.

[juuule]

I don't make snacks in the night for anyone now either

The kitchen is still open after midnight occasionally, though, when our 21yo or 18yo come in after a night out and decide to eat before they go to bed
Do you think it was those early morning snacks that I gave them that were habit forming?

[AbbeyA]

If my DSs get in late I count that as still day time for them! As long as I don't make it I am happy!

[onwardandupward]

This is a great thread.

For the record, I now have a massive boarding-school-girly crush on Mawbroom, FrannyandZooey, Juule and Anastaisia, and I just wanted to record my debt of gratitude to AbbeyA for more than two gut ripping belly laughs in the course of this thread, with the "take it to the GP" making me almost pee myself.

Yes, ladies, if our children do not sleep soundly for 12 hours a night and without disturbance for food, milk or any other needs from the age of zero, take them to AN EXPERT (the GP) and get them mended.

goes to the soundly-sleeping-infant shop and demands a refund

[nappyaddict]

not read all the thread but sometimes when i can;t sleep eating helps.

"Apparently we are better suited to two periods of sleep rather than one, ie you go to sleep after dinner, go for a few hours, then wake up and have a couple of hours social time, then back to sleep until the morning."

This is me all over. Come 7pm i am shattered and will go to sleep til about 9. Then I will get up and go back to sleep about 12.

[AbbeyA]

I have said before onwardandupward that I get driven into saying some silly things!
Basically, I wouldn't breast feed a 3 year old at night, I would have them in their own bed and show them where the water was! Mothers have rights too-I am not going to make a perfectly healthy 3 yr old snacks at 4.30am if I know that they had a pretty normal day foodwise!
I will leave the thread before I get carried away again!

[onwardandupward]

"Basically, I wouldn't breast feed a 3 year old at night, I would have them in their own bed and show them where the water was! Mothers have rights too-I am not going to make a perfectly healthy 3 yr old snacks at 4.30am if I know that they had a pretty normal day foodwise!"

So:

You don't believe co-sleeping is a good idea
You don't believe in breastfeeding a toddler on demand is a good idea
You don't believe in a small child listening to the hunger cues of their own body, because you consider it more important to have a regular, conventional and absolutely non-negotiable routine of when people eat.

Given that in the first two areas you are diametrically opposed to the OP, how likely is it that your advice in the third area is likely to be pertinent?

[oi]

onwardandupward, I'm glad you found what I said so funny. As it happened, my child waking up wanting to eat at night happened to be the sign of a stomach issue which needed medical attention. But you know, please do go ahead and laugh at other people's experiences because it's ever such a mature response.

[onwardandupward]

I didn't laugh at you oi. I didn't actually read your post. [hangs head in shame at thread skimming] I quite see that very frequent night wakings with uncomfortable stomachs would be a really good reason to seek medical help. I'm glad you found the help for your family that you needed.

[FrannyandZooey]

you know what I have been thinking?
I don't think many people on this thread know bugger all about sleep and how it works
all this "the vital benefit of a full night's sleep without waking up" business

it's bollocks
you ALL wake up SEVERSAL times a night - and go back to sleep without usually knowing anything about it
it really doesn't matter a hoot whether you have to get up for a wee, or a snack, or roll over, or just fall straight back to sleep - as long as you get enough sleep in total
we all have sleep rhythms consisting of periods of light sleep interspersed with deep sleep - and we are DESIGNED to waken slightly several times a night - it's our bodies' way of checking we are not smothering, or dying of cold, or being eaten by a mammoth, or whatever

young children often awaken much more fully than adults and sometimes need help to get back into a deep sleep

it's normal
it doesn't mean they don't get enough sleep in total
in fact it means precisely zilch except that they are physically immature and not yet adult

[oi]

ah it's fine onward, I thought you were taking the piss

I was a dreadful sleeper as a child. Am still a v light sleeper (as is dd)!

[HonoriaGlossop]

Well thank goodness you are here then Franny to enlighten our ignorance. I for one didn't say they shouldn't be waking at all and I am aware of what you mention.

Whether a parent wants to feed a waking child or not is a completely different matter.

[megarinnyroo]

I have to say after coming back into the conversation after 24 hours I am amazed! I thought this was a forum of advice where everyone was free to express their opinion and the poster of the question could pick and chose what to do from that! I never thought that such a BIATCH fight could erupt over something so simple.

To the poster having thought about you alot today and asking some of my friends from a breastfeeding network near me, maybe your little one is waking up hungry due to his demand feeding during the night. He may well be filling up on bm in the wee hours and then not taking enough solid food thru the day to keep him full thru the evening. You could do too things to help with this:

Move his dinner slightly earlier than you do now so that he eats at least an hour and a half before he goes to bed and offer him some cereal right before tooth brush and bed time.

or

Stop feeding him thru the night so that he is genuinly hungrier during the day and add in an extra fruit snack or so. My friend (breast feeder for 3 years with number 1 and still going) suggested you could keep his bf for a before bed cuddle time so you still keep the bond you enjoy.

As I said in my last post my personal opinions differ but the postere has her own mind and values.

[AbbeyA]

'I thought this was a forum of advice where everyone was free to express their opinion and the poster of the question could pick and chose what to do from that!'

I wasn't going to come back but I wanted to agree with this statement mearinnyroo-it is what I believed.
Onwardandupward has summarised my views very accurately but I wasn't aware that I wasn't supposed to give them.

I may have missed something but it is on the breast and bottle feeding thread so it is unlikely that everyone will agree.

[mawbroon]

Well, how funny. This is normally the kind of MN thread that I would normally only lurk on and never actually post, but hey guess what, I started the blooming thing!

A few more points to clarify. No doctor's visit needed, DS is fine. Also, he eats very well during the day so no issues with filling up on breastmilk and it putting him off his food through the day.

As somebody said, the thread isn't actually about breastfeeding a (nearly) three year old, either during the day or night, but it appears to have gone that way a bit too. There have been more than enough threads on MN about natural term feeding, so I am not going to add anything further on that subject. It's what DS and I do, and it's what works for us.

I am guessing (hoping) that even the most staunch "child stays in bed - end of" posters would allow the child out of bed if they needed to go to the toilet, or comfort them if say, they had had a bad dream. Assuming that you do this, then illustrates the principle of each individual drawing the line in a different place. I have decided to draw my line in a place that if this ever happens again, then I would get ds something to eat. A couple of posters mentioned that ds was already having his needs met by co sleeping and breastfeeding, but on this night, he clearly wasn't having his needs met as he was hungry. Simple as that.

[purplemonkeydishwasher]

I heart mawbroon!!!

[mawbroon]

[onwardandupward]

Get in line purplemonkeydishwasher. I went public with my schoolgirl crush first.

[juuule]

Round of applause for mawbroon

[pointydog]

What would I do?

Being regularly woken up during the night would drive me nuts and I would be very bad-tempered at the thought of getting up at 4.30 in teh morning to get a snack.

SO I wouldn't feed a 2 or 3 year old anything in the night.

[Guadalupe]

Well, if I wake up hungry tonight I shall try and avoid a biscuit for fear of that hairy arse lurking, SNARKY.