Feeding at night -ongoing sleep issues at 20months

[Mondaybaby]

My dd has always been a terrible sleeper. She has never slept longer than about 6 hours in a row. I am still bf her at night and usually I bf her to sleep. My latest problem is that recently she has started to wake in the night, at about 4am, and demanded a bottle of milk. She is hysterical if I say no. So I have been goiving it to her. To be honest it is easier and quicker than bf her and I would like her to self wean soon. She falls back to sleep after drinking the milk - around 6-7 oz. I don't know if she is really hungry or if it is just a habbit. She is not a brilliant eater so I am thinking she is really hungry. Should I just go with it?

(((hugs))) honey. I'm going to say this very gently. I think probably the reason she isn't a great sleeper is because she hasn't learned how to sleep independently, instead she has BF to sleep. So when she wakes in the night she doesn't know how to put herself back to sleep & she relies on you (BF) to help her.

As for the bottle - by all means if it gets her back to sleep you may wish to continue, but I would say this is probably a habit now, esp if she is waking at the same time each day. It could be hunger related, but TBH I think you will get caught in a vicious cycle by continuing to feed her at night. At her age she really doesn't need feeding in the night at all, and it is possibly this that is affecting her appetite during the day. You might just find if you cut out some of the night feeds her appetite during the day will increase.

If its something you do want to tackle, there are various ways to deal with it - you don't necessarily have to use CC if you aren't comfortable with it. You could perhaps cut out one feed at a time, or go cold turkey & have your partner/a family member help you with the resettles at night time because she already knows only mummy can give her the BF IYSWIM?

No pressure though hun, the choice is yours - if you would rather wait for her to stop feeding thats just fine.xxx

Thanks for your reply. I agree that she can not settle herself. For the last 2 nights I have stopped feeding her to sleep and it has been incredibly hard work getting her to sleep.
I have decided that over the long bank holiday weekend I am going to get tough. I don't want to force her to wean but I do want to tackle the other issues - feeding at night and the 4am bottle. I have night weaned her before but then she got a run of bad ear infections and bf her was the only thing that stopped her from being so distressed so we went right back to the start again. But she NEVER stops asking for it. I agree that I don't think things will improve until i stop bf feeding her altogether.
Thanks again Omama for your reply. You kind of said what i knew anyway but had to hear it from someone else!