Is 18 month old hungry at night?

[wishIwasonholiday10]

My 18 month old keeps waking during the night and the only way to reliably settle her is with a bottle of milk (normal cow's milk). She slept through the night without a feed from around 6-13 months but then we had a patch of really bad sleep from teething and illnesses and started giving her milk during the night to help her settle and now it seems to be a habit even when shes not obviously unwell. I can't work out if she is really hungry or just drinking milk for comfort? I usually offer water first but sometimes she turns it down and still wants milk and other times she'll drink some water but won't settle properly. I'm exhausted from the constant disrupted sleep which is affecting my performance at work and DD needs a good sleep in order to cope with nursery - the disrupted sleep means she never wants to get up in the morning and gets tired by the afternoon at nursery. Any tips on how to stop the night time feeds and get a better sleep for everyone? Other than the disrupted sleep I'm worried that drinking milk during the night is terrrible for her teeth.

She can be a bit of a fussy eater so I'm not sure she's getting what she needs food wise. I do offer her something she likes if she doesn't eat dinner but I'm a bit concerned she's not eating much protein as she usually rejects meat and fish.

I don't think she needs it at 18 months, but her body will wake her due to hunger as she is used to having milk at that time now. So she is waking hungry in that sense. It's a case of gradually offering her less milk and settling her back to sleep in other ways (imo)

Does she have milk (or something milky like poridge) just before bed? Might be worth introducing or increasing the calories as last as you can to see if that gets her through to morning.

My 15 month old (second child if that matters) was having three feeds a night at 12 months because it’s the only way I could settle him. When we saw the heath visitor she recommended watering down the milk and gradually making it more water and less milk and that he’d wean himself off night feeds. We are down to one wake up a night where he just has a couple of ounces of very watery milk and a cuddle. May be worth trying?

Thanks all, I’ll try the suggestions.

She already has a bottle of milk before bed.