excessive feeding at night-----help!

[ugglyduckling]

please help i have a 15month old DD, she has never been the best of sleepers but recently OMG!!!! please help me.

on an average night she drinks three 10oz bottles of cows milk and two 10 oz bottles of water! this cant be right??

She has water available all day and i constantly ask her if she wants a drink, she eats breakfast lunch and dinner and has two snacks during the day so i dont think she can be hungry ive tried increasing the amount of food she has during the day and water but she just doesnt want it.

I thaught possibly that i should try just not giving her any milk at night and swaped it for water but she just drank 5 bottles of water! she has a dummy so i know she finds comfort in the sucking action but she just seems to be so thirsty. obviously she is constantly wet during the night and sometimes it soaks through her nappy a few times a night, so her little bottom is red raw. Also with the disruption in her sleep and mine it cant be good.

This has been going on for a few months i thaught maybe it was just becoming habbit but when i tried to be strong and not give her any liquid during the night she got so distressed ive never seen her like that before.

please any advice would be most gratefull xxx

Hi uglyduckling. goodness, i don't think i could drink that much on a night so hats of to your DD for being able to pack that amount of liquid away! Firstly, have you talked to your doctor about this? It's a lot of fluid to get through and maybe she has an unusual requirement for fluid?

I'm pretty sure she doesn't need this much fluid - she's drinking not far off 1.5 litres of water a night so it's probably her soaking nappy that is waking her and then she can't get back to sleep because of the sleep association she has with a bottle. I read a similar case to this in Richard Ferber's 'Solve your child's Sleep Problems' (many people think Richard Ferber is just about controlled crying but he's actually just a sleep professor who writes very interesting books about sleep and you can take or leave the controlled crying). I'd recommend you get it out of the library and read it because the case study is too long for me to write out. The study is on page 136 of the new edition. Basically your DD has grown accustomed to getting her milk/water requirements at night rather than during the day so you need to gradually shift this to during the day. Going cold turkey would be cruel so can you reduce the amount in the bottles over a week or so so that she is 'forced' to drink more during the day if her body actually needs the fluid. If she doesn't actually need the fluid, she will then gradually get used to having less and less until she doesn't need it at all. Well, that's the theory anyway.

Sorry if this advice seems a bit simple - you'd probably already thought of doing this.

Is she drinking a lot of fluid during the day as well? If so, please ask your GP to test her for diabetes, as excessive thirst is a common symptom of this.