Monday, June 05, 2006

Night Hunger Breakthrough

As my daughter has continued to grow, her ability to eat has gotten completely outrun by the amount of energy she expends growing and crawling around getting into things all day. Her appetite has always been one of her biggest problems, but now she’s so active, she just burns through calories way too fast.

My wife and I know this because even though we feed her a snack right before bed, our little one is up crying with hunger off and on from two to six every morning. It’s not very fun for anyone involved, but I think we’ve had a breakthrough. Last night my wife decided to give her a big drink of whole milk, cream and baby rice cereal to tide her over until morning. The little one drank greedily and downed about seven ounces and then passed out again. She didn’t wake up until 7 am. She slept so long my wife almost thought something was wrong.

So needless to say, from now on we’ll be keeping a special little shake to feed our daughter at around two in the morning so she’ll go the rest of the night in peace. It doesn’t take long to feed to her. She doesn’t even have to leave the bed, but it fills her enough to make it to breakfast and increases the overall total calories she’s getting each day. I’m sure glad for a wife who’s able to think clearly at two in the morning.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on figuring that out! EK woke up last night at 4:30, as well, and would only settle again after I gave her a bottle; I hate to encourage that 'night feeding' thing, as we just got her sleeping through the night in the last month or so, but desperation set in and, well....

I do try to increase her calories and volume of food right before bedtime, but its been kind of hit or miss. (Of course, after her tonsils came out, she put on 6 pounds almost immediately, so we aren't facing the low-weight problem so much right now).

But, congrats again!

--bella
Rain on Tulips