Feeding FAQ: 4-6 months – Breast Feeding

Is hunger causing my daughter of almost 5mths to be unsettled in the evenings?

My daughter is not settling well after her 6pm feed and it is taking my husband and me a long time to settle her. Once settled she wakes up within half an hour and this continues until about 9pm. She then only has about 1 hour sleep before we wake her up for her 10pm feed. We have tried leaving this feed but she wakes around 12.30am. This has been happening now for a week. During the day she is sleeping for about 45mins in the morning, between 1hr & 1.5 hrs at lunch and she has a 20/30 min nap about 4pm. If she doesn’t have this nap she falls asleep when feeding or is so grizzly that bathing is impossible. In the mornings I can simply put her in her cot and she goes off to sleep within 5/10 mins but we can’t seem to do this at night – she cries intensely. Do you think she is hungry? She appears to have finished breast feeding when I try to put her down.

At present she is fully breast fed. She began this week with baby rice at the 11am feed.

If your daughter settles well during the rest of the day and sleeps well through the night from her last feed, then hunger is the most likely cause of her restless behaviour in the evening. By this time of day your milk supply may be lower. This often happens at this feed as it is difficult for a mother to rest in the afternoon when caring for a baby. Offer her a top up of expressed milk as soon as she appears to have finished feeding or you may decide, as many mothers do, to offer her a breast feed at 5pm and an expressed feed at 6.30pm after her bath. This should help your supply, providing you rest in the evening after your daughter is settled.

Make sure that you have a drink and a healthy snack by 5pm. Often, without realizing it, mothers will go all the way through from lunchtime until supper without eating anything and drinking little. Good ideas for snacks at this time of day include wholemeal toast and peanut butter, malt loaf, bananas, natural yoghurt, a handful of nuts and seeds or even a slice of fruit cake. This should keep up your energy levels for your daughter’s bath time and getting her settled before you enjoy your own supper in the evening.