Dinner - what time to allow food to digest before bed?

[muminaspin]

I wondered what time dinner should be ideally to allow for proper digestion of food before bedtime?
My dd's, age 15mths and 3 years have their main meal of the day, dinner, at about 4.45pm, then supper (beaker of milk and biscuit) about 1 hour later, and in bed by 6.30 pm... Is this enough time for food to digest and not cause a problem at night. DD1, who is 3 doesn't seem to have a problem, but the 15 mth old is awake in the night and early morning crying, then wakes every morning with a horrible pooey nappy, then seems happy!

Don't see what you can do to avoid the nappy - my DD tends to do a poo first thing (she's 8mo) which is an improvement on middle of the night.

My two are 3.11 and 0.8 and generally we eat our main meal sometime between 6 and 6.30 and they are in bed by 7.30. On nursery days they eat at 4.30 and then have fruit while we eat our dinner. And I've not noticed a difference in how they settle.

Have you tried to vary things at all? Personally I try to feed them up late in the day because if either of them wake up hungry in the morning they are horrible. DS didn't eat tea on Christmas Day (too busy playing) and was awful on Boxing Day am but wouldn't eat until I finally persuaded him to have a jam sandwich!