From: judyd@pendragon.CNA.TEK.COM (Judy E. Drake)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Sleeping problem? We dont know.
Date: 6 Apr 92 16:51:37 GMT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Redmond,  OR.

In article <13407@donald.WichitaKS.NCR.COM> skejriwa@donald.WichitaKS.NCR.COM writes:
>In article <1992Mar28.032657.26445@convex.com>
>strike@convex.com (Martin Streicher) writes:
     Madeline has started waking up at 2 a.m. for a bottle; may be
     teething...
>> That is one problem we are not sure how to solve. Is she teething,
>> is she supposed to change schedules on her own at this age? We dont
>> know what the cause is.
>
>My 7 month son, would go to bed at 8pm & then wake up at 11pm
>crying & returning back to sleep only if I fed him a bottle...
>I talked to my pediatrician about this & he said that refrain from
>giving him a bottle at 11pm - comfort him, talk to him, but let him 
>know -- "No Food," after bedtime ... according to him, kids
>get up at night & getting a feed is their way of trying to socialize
>at night, & they should be able to go without feeds for around
>7-8 hours at night.   

I am not an expert, just a mother, but I tend to disagree with this
pediatrician's advice.  Maybe some kids wake up at night to
socialize, but mine definitely prefer to sleep at night, and if 
they wake up it _is_ because they're hungry (as long as they're
healthy, that is).

If my son woke up at night and yelled, and didn't immediately go
back to sleep (I'd give him 3 or 4 minutes to see if he did), I'd
get up and give him a bottle.  I don't think he was too interested
in socializing, because usually he'd suck the bottle down without
opening his eyes.

I would never deny my kids food when they seem hungry, even if
it is the middle of the night.  One thing I did with my son that
I will soon start with my baby daughter was to put him down for the 
night between 8 and 9, then wake him up and feed him right before 
I went to bed, about 11. That would seem to hold him through until 
the early morning hours, when he'd get up to eat again, then back to 
bed until 8 or 9 a.m.  We did this for several months, it seemed.

I don't remember how old Jordan was when he no longer needed his
11 o'clock bottle, but I stopped waking him up for it when he started
drinking less and less of the bottle.  Finally it reached the point
when he wouldn't rouse himself enough to eat, and I stopped.  At
that point he was also reliably sleeping through every night, and
had already given up his early morning bottle.  He was also eating 
more and more solids.

My kids change their sleeping patterns constantly.  My 3-month-old 
daughter has already had several nocturnal schedules--
going from waking up at 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. for bottles, to omitting
the 2 a.m. bottle, to adding it back again.  I just do whatever
she wants, I figure she knows best.

My daughter hasn't started teething yet, but whenever teething
disrupted my son's sleep, he'd wake up hungry during the night.
It seemed like the teething pain would wake him up, then he'd
realize that he was hungry.  I'd give him Tylenol and a bottle
and he'd go back to sleep again.  This would last a few nights,
then he'd drop it.

Anyway, this is becoming a rather long-winded way of saying that
for me it works best to just answer my kids' demands with what they
seem to need.  Neither of them (yet) have developed any undesirable
"habits" that I've had to "break" them of.  (Well, I take that back--
but that's a whole 'nother thread!)

As with anything like this, of course, YMMV.

Judy Drake