Sooner or later the chest baby should be disaccustomed to night feedings. Regular night awakenings bring a lot of trouble and inconveniences upon parents – it they should feed the child if he demands food in the middle of night. And night feedings are often demanded as the babies who are on breastfeeding and babies who are on artificial feeding.
What does the reason that the child demands food at night consist in? The fact is that small children did not manage to develop yet a habit to sleep for 8-10 hours as adults. Recently born babies got used to continuous pre-natal feeding therefore their dream can last 3-4 hours – upon termination of this period they wake up from hunger. Moreover, even children are more senior – from a year to two years – quite often on a habit wake up in the middle of night, wishing to eat or just to communicate to parents. Whether it is worth refusing night feedings and if yes, as it it is correct to make that?
- If your child is on breastfeeding, and you are not going to separate it from a breast – completely you should not remove night feedings. In mother's organism hormone prolactin which is responsible for quality and volume of a lactation is produced at night. Having completely refused night feedings, you will face a problem of shortage of breast But it is possible to reduce the number of night feedings to once.
- The child who is on artificial feeding too quite often disturbs parents at night. Some parents prefer to leave a small bottle with warm mix in a bed near the kid, expecting that he will find it independently, but even in this case one small bottle happens a little – and as a result all the same it is necessary to wake up. Therefore it is better to disaccustom such children to night feedings completely.
- Remember that most less often in the middle of night children who densely ate before going to bed wake up. Therefore sometimes for breaking from feedings at night rather just to postpone an evening feeding up to the latest time. One more effective way – warm baths with the calming herbs (motherwort, a valerian, hop, a lavender) or essential oils.
Some children wake up in the middle of the night not only for the sake of feeding how many to feel tactile contact with mom or dad. Try to communicate as much as possible with the kid in the afternoon – for example, you carry him on a baby sling or on hands more often. Sooner or later night feedings will stop being need.