Periods affecting breastfed baby?

[Ponyclubmum]

Once a month, for about the last 6 months, my son (12 months old) becomes very unsettled at night. It always happens about 2 days before I come on my period, and lasts for about 4 days. He goes to sleep fine, but wakes up around 2am and is very upset. It can take up to 2 hours to get him off to sleep again. For the rest of the month he sleeps all night with no problems, so could this be something to do with the hormones in my breastmilk? Or is it a massive coincidence?! My health visitor has never heard of this before, but she's not the most useful of people to be honest....

The same happens to my dd she is very fussy and wants to feed a lot more just before and during my period.

I think it happens quite a bit to bf babies as I posted with the same problem a while back and lots of posters said they had found the same.

Not sure what causes it.

Don't know, sorry, but watching with interest.

My 10 month old has been all over the place in the last couple of weeks sleep wise (unusual late lie ins, or the last 2 days, 5am starts). And I got my first period a couple of weeks back, just followed now by another little one . Hmmm....

I think, and I could be wrong, that sometimes monthly hormonal variations can affect your milk supply slightly. I always used to notice a drop in my supply just prior to my period. Perhaps he's not getting as much during the day, and so that's why he's waking at night? Or could be just coincidence, but thought I would speculate wildly. Great that he sleeps through most other nights though

my milk supply drops when i have my period, so it's possible yours is the same and your son is actually waking due to hunger

That's interesting. Well hopefully if that's the case, it'll not be a problem for much longer, as I'm dropping a couple of breastfeeds and upping the solids. I didn't think he was having that much milk anymore, but it's hard to tell.
Thanks for the help everyone!
I'm still interested to hear any other theories (wildly speculative or not ), in case it continues to be a problem as long as he's getting any breastmilk.