Low supply, toddler waking hungry at 4a...

[justthinkn]

So I'm a longterm SNS user with IGT/low supply, only have to supplement with about 5 oz/day with my 14.5mo. She's always had that 4a-dawn nurse-a-thon that so many experience. Lately, tho, it seems worse in two ways. (1) The rest of the night, when she wakes up to nurse, she lets me remove her and get more comfortable in bed once she's done - it's so nice! But from 4a on, it's aggressive, constantly latched, wrestling with me type nursing - not restful for either of us. (2) She's learned signs for eating and more, and yesterday morning in the midst of the wrestling, she was signing like crazy...

So I think she's really hungry from 4a on, and I just don't have enough milk left at that point. I really feel like I'm feeding her as much as she wants and needs during the day - solids, nursing and supp's. If I kept the SNS in a cooler by the bed and nursed her with it at 4a, do you think I'd be setting up a bad habit, or would she outgrow it when she was ready?? Should I make it a different snack not to further ingrain the SNS, which I would love to fully wean off at some point...

[svmaine]

What time is her last feed at night? I'm also a LS w/IGT mama and would often give a bottle, around 11 or 12, usually when I was going to bed, and that would help with the 4-6am nurse-a-thons. My 7mth old is randomly doing those early morning "urgent" nursing sessions and sometimes he settles back down and sometimes not:. The late night bottle seemed to work better when my DS's get a bit older.

Good luck!

[justthinkn]

Interesting... Her (usual) last big feed with the SNS is before dinner, about 4:30p. Then of course she nurses lots before bedtime and during the night.

She won't take a bottle, unfortunately, but the last two nights - one night I did the SNS at 11p, and we had a much more peaceful night and morning - then last night, I just fed her at 4a when she woke up with the SNS. It went ok... She seemed a little confused as to whether it was wakeup time or not, but I'm sure she'd get used to it after a day or two... And she did take my encouragement to unlatch and go back to sleep after the SNS...