Hello, everyone. I'm a new member here, and I have been trying to find other experiences similar to what I am going through with my son, "Finn," who is 22 months old now.
For the past month, Finn has woken up at 4AM almost every morning saying that he's hungry. This, in itself, is not at all unusual, as you'll see from the subsequent paragraphs describing his previous eating and sleeping habits. What's unusual is that he seems mildly obsessed with making sure that he has food available to him when he goes to sleep and wakes up in the middle of the night, even if he doesn't eat any of it. It's like he just want to know that's it's there, like it's a security blanket or something. As soon as we finish his bedtime routine (bath, snack, brush teeth, books & nursing), he immediately starts saying, "eat! eat!" with genuine distress, as if we regularly send him to bed hungry. I assure him that of course we'll get him something to eat, that Daddy has made a waffle for him, and that he can eat that with Daddy upstairs in bed. (I then hand him off to Daddy, who has already toasted the aforementioned waffle.) This reassurance (and of course, the appearance of the actual waffle) always calms him down, even though my husband reports that Finn often only takes a nibble or two of the waffle, if he takes any at all.
Finn then wakes up each night around 4AM screaming for Mommy. When I go over to him and try to pat him back down, he is always insistent that he's hungry, signing "Eat" and also, more recently, saying, "Eat! Eat! Eat!" I always cuddle with him, show him the waffle and water that we keep next to the bed, but it's often not until I pick him up and walk him downstairs to the actual kitchen and pop the waffle back into the toaster oven for a few seconds that he'll calm down. When we walk back upstairs with the food, he will, once again, sometimes eat half of the waffle, but more often than not, won't eat any at all even though he was proclaiming only minutes before how hungry he was. In the last two weeks, what I'll call these "hunger nightmares" have become more "verbal." On separate occasions, I have now caught him signing "Eat" while still asleep, saying "eat, eat, eat" while still asleep, and also saying "all gone. all gone. all gone." while sleeping.
If we had ever, EVER withheld food from him in any way, I would, perhaps, understand this behavior in the context of his current collection of experiences, but we have always been incredibly responsive (and more often than not, anticipatory) in terms of his hunger cues. I'm hypoglycemic, so I'm perhaps hyper-aware of how low blood sugar can affect mood and energy levels. As a result, we always carry snacks around with us, both for Mommy and Finn. If he's cranky or his behavior changes quickly, I have always offered him something to eat to see if he's hungry. (If he is, great, but if not, I certainly don't push the food.) I have always nursed on demand and, aside from some rules about nursing locations now that he's a toddler, still basically do.
Could any of this be related to something traumatic in a past life? Finn has always been a truly horrible sleeper, which is why we coslept from the beginning. When your baby nurses around the clock and only sleeps in 45 minute increments, you have to cosleep to survive! He has had terrible nightmares almost since we brought him home, and honestly, because he was 6 weeks early and spent 10 days in the NICU, I always attributed his nightmares to that. (Even though we stayed with him as much as the hospital would allow, I'm sure that the hospital-imposed feeding schedule of every 3 hours was tough on him, and being without us for 6 hours at night probably contributed to his acute separation anxiety. Still, could 10 days in the NICU manifest itself in a nighttime food obsession at 22 months?)
I should mention that Finn has this fixation with food availability only at night. During the day, it seems that he's perfectly confident that he will be fed whenever he needs to be. If it's at all relevant, we also didn't force any type of nighttime weaning. About two months ago, we simply talked about how nursing was going to sleep at night and would wake back up when the sun came up, and he took to it beautifully, with no tears. (And that's saying A LOT, because Finn is a very persistent, vocal, high-needs kind of kid. For him not to cry about something is nothing short of a miracle.)
So has anyone heard of anything like this? I have read Carol's first book, but I don't remember it addressing anything in a child this young who wasn't speaking in longer sentences yet.
For the past month, Finn has woken up at 4AM almost every morning saying that he's hungry. This, in itself, is not at all unusual, as you'll see from the subsequent paragraphs describing his previous eating and sleeping habits. What's unusual is that he seems mildly obsessed with making sure that he has food available to him when he goes to sleep and wakes up in the middle of the night, even if he doesn't eat any of it. It's like he just want to know that's it's there, like it's a security blanket or something. As soon as we finish his bedtime routine (bath, snack, brush teeth, books & nursing), he immediately starts saying, "eat! eat!" with genuine distress, as if we regularly send him to bed hungry. I assure him that of course we'll get him something to eat, that Daddy has made a waffle for him, and that he can eat that with Daddy upstairs in bed. (I then hand him off to Daddy, who has already toasted the aforementioned waffle.) This reassurance (and of course, the appearance of the actual waffle) always calms him down, even though my husband reports that Finn often only takes a nibble or two of the waffle, if he takes any at all.
Finn then wakes up each night around 4AM screaming for Mommy. When I go over to him and try to pat him back down, he is always insistent that he's hungry, signing "Eat" and also, more recently, saying, "Eat! Eat! Eat!" I always cuddle with him, show him the waffle and water that we keep next to the bed, but it's often not until I pick him up and walk him downstairs to the actual kitchen and pop the waffle back into the toaster oven for a few seconds that he'll calm down. When we walk back upstairs with the food, he will, once again, sometimes eat half of the waffle, but more often than not, won't eat any at all even though he was proclaiming only minutes before how hungry he was. In the last two weeks, what I'll call these "hunger nightmares" have become more "verbal." On separate occasions, I have now caught him signing "Eat" while still asleep, saying "eat, eat, eat" while still asleep, and also saying "all gone. all gone. all gone." while sleeping.
If we had ever, EVER withheld food from him in any way, I would, perhaps, understand this behavior in the context of his current collection of experiences, but we have always been incredibly responsive (and more often than not, anticipatory) in terms of his hunger cues. I'm hypoglycemic, so I'm perhaps hyper-aware of how low blood sugar can affect mood and energy levels. As a result, we always carry snacks around with us, both for Mommy and Finn. If he's cranky or his behavior changes quickly, I have always offered him something to eat to see if he's hungry. (If he is, great, but if not, I certainly don't push the food.) I have always nursed on demand and, aside from some rules about nursing locations now that he's a toddler, still basically do.
Could any of this be related to something traumatic in a past life? Finn has always been a truly horrible sleeper, which is why we coslept from the beginning. When your baby nurses around the clock and only sleeps in 45 minute increments, you have to cosleep to survive! He has had terrible nightmares almost since we brought him home, and honestly, because he was 6 weeks early and spent 10 days in the NICU, I always attributed his nightmares to that. (Even though we stayed with him as much as the hospital would allow, I'm sure that the hospital-imposed feeding schedule of every 3 hours was tough on him, and being without us for 6 hours at night probably contributed to his acute separation anxiety. Still, could 10 days in the NICU manifest itself in a nighttime food obsession at 22 months?)
I should mention that Finn has this fixation with food availability only at night. During the day, it seems that he's perfectly confident that he will be fed whenever he needs to be. If it's at all relevant, we also didn't force any type of nighttime weaning. About two months ago, we simply talked about how nursing was going to sleep at night and would wake back up when the sun came up, and he took to it beautifully, with no tears. (And that's saying A LOT, because Finn is a very persistent, vocal, high-needs kind of kid. For him not to cry about something is nothing short of a miracle.)
So has anyone heard of anything like this? I have read Carol's first book, but I don't remember it addressing anything in a child this young who wasn't speaking in longer sentences yet.
