my 4 month old waking in the night hungry do i wean yet?

[jeanini]

hi my dd2 is just 4 months old and was sleeping thru the night. but the last couple of nights has been waking up several times.

i try and put dummy in and she goes back to sleep at first then in the middle of the night she can wait no more and has about 6 oz of milk.

she has also gone from having 5 bottles of about 5 oz in 24 hours to having up to 7 bottles of 3-4 oz. i have tried to get her to have more milk but she wont have it. i have to wait till she is hungry for her to have it.

she has been diagnosed as having reflux and this seems to be getting worse at the mo as well. i did read somewhere that it normally peaks at 4 months and starts to improve at 7 months.

do i start to give her baby rice or carry on with her waking in the night. the hosp advised me to wean at 5 months as they said as long as she doesnt have protein before 6 months its ok. they said you have to do whats right for the baby. and with reflux it helps when they start having solids.

any views/advice/help please xxx

Don't start with the baby rice. She doesn't need it.

If she has reflux, she may be waking from related pain in her oesaphagus. My DS had this and woke very 20 minutes because he had what adults call "heartburn". He was on the severe end of the scale and had a camera inserted to see what was going on - the poor chap had what looked like burns because of the acid reflux - we knew he had reflux because he puked after every feed - we weren't aware it was painful because he was so happy in the day.

There is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that giving a baby solids will help them sleep through the night. If anything you might find it upsets the sleep pattern even more.

Sorry to be so "full-on" about it, but I am pretty passionate about this subject, having gone through the mill of bad advice on early weaning and the never ending cycle of broken nights and ear infections (related to reflux) that this brought on.

One last thing - your DD may well just be coming down with something, or her teeth may be coming through the deep tissue. Hang in there until the suggested 25 weeks before you wean - it's good advice.

What teat are you using on her bottles? It might be time to move up a number.

Solids didn't help dd's reflux, just created multicoloured vomit ! Perfectly normal for them to get restless in night at about this time but that itself isn't an indicator of need to wean. Give it a week or so and it may resolve itself.