timing of dinner and bedtime to help with sleeping through the night

[lkmiscnet]

My 18 mo co-sleeping son has continued to wake every 3 hours during the night and I have been nursing him, but for the past couple of days. As it gets closer to dawn, he wakes every 1-2 hours to be nursed.

He was a poor solid food eater, but is now eating much better and he is not nursing during the day. He has been nursing to fall asleep at nap and bed time and once or twice before we wake up for the morning. He had been nursing during the night, but I've been having luck with cuddling him back to sleep the past couple of days.

I am fairly certain that he does not need to nurse at night for the calories and is only doing so out of habit. However, up until he was eating better, I felt that he may have genuinely been hungry at night so I nursed as much as he wanted. We are both getting poor quality sleep as a result, so I am trying to get him to sleep through the night.

Metabolically and per his pediatrician, he should be able to sleep through the night without needing any calories.

However, dinner time may be any where from 2-4 hours before he actually falls asleep.  I try to give him a snack slightly before bedtime, but like tonight, he didn't want any more food.  I do nurse him to sleep, so I suppose that is his "snack".

And, what if he has an early bedtime (e.g. 6:30pm) if he misses a nap that day. Can he go 12 hours without calories?

I'm wondering how soon before bedtime he should eat to enable him to STTN and how many hours should he be able to go before he needs to eat/nurse?  Last night, I was able to stretch him to 8 hours, but I wasn't sure if he was really hungry or not when he started crying at 4am, so I nursed him just in case.

[Marissamom]

we try to have something about an hour before DD's (18 months) bedtime. she usually sleeps about 12 hours through the night, but every kid is different, and she's really hungry by the time she gets up. and he may need those early morning calories until he's actually sleeping straight through, being awake uses a lot mire calories than being asleep. 

[redvlagrl]

We have dinner at 6pm and bedtime is 7pm. Perhaps you could offer a caloric snack (peanut butter, cheese, etc) shortly before bed.

[darcytrue]

It may be tough to do, but when he wakes during the night resort to either rocking him or laying with him til he goes back to sleep. He will eventually get used to not getting milk at that time if you stick to it.

[bella99]

We do dinner at 6:30 (sometimes closer to 7, but never later), and bedtime is at 8.  She consistently sleeps 8-8.   I usually offer her milk or a yogurt smoothie upon waking up in the morning, because she's usually hungry.

[healthy momma]

A couple of thoughts for what they are worth. DS is 2.5. He has always been a fantastic eater and breastfed constantly day and night. That said he breastfed day and ALL night. 2 to 3 hours in between was a long stretch. And 18 months was the worst. I thought I was going to lose it if he didn't start sleeping longer. He finally did. Starting at 20 months the stretches did get longer - about 4 hours. At 26 months we were able to smoothly make the transition to nursing to sleep and then feeding only when he awoke around 5:00 am. We did have about a month where he would wake up between 2 and 3 am and ask for milk. I'd just say "momma doesn't have any milk until morning but you can cuddle with me." He'd cuddle and fall back to sleep. Now he doesn't ask. Mind you when we first tried this at about 17 months it did NOT work. He was not ready. We tried it about once a month from that point on until he was ready. All of that is to say that I don't think it has anything to do with caloric intake or what time he eats dinner (DS ate/eats constantly right up to a bite of banana after nursing and before cuddling with me to sleep). If you can handle the sleep interruptions by taking naps I'd say wait it out a bit longer. It is very satisfying to have your child night wean on their own schedule without accompanying tears and possible insecurities. If you can't cope physically or emotionally with the interrupted sleep then know that you did the best you could and gently work on stretching that time period and doing some serious cuddling and soothing instead. Good luck.

[JMJ]

DD doesn't STTN, but I did get her to sleep a few hours (instead of every 45 min all night) by feeding her olives and cheese an hour before bed.  If your son won't eat later, you may move dinner and bedtime closer.