Q: My daughter is 8 months old. For the past 1 month her night sleep is totally disturbed. She cries once in every 1 hour and my wife has to breast feed her. From then onwards she cries every 2 hours and stops only when fed. My wife doesn't have sufficient milk to feed her every 2 hours at night. Due to this her sleep is being disturbed every night, which further affects our sleep. I have seen babies getting a sound sleep at night, they cry for a few minutes but once they are fed, they stop crying and sleep well. But in my daughter's case it is happening almost 5-6 times at night.

A:It is likely that your child is feeling hungry at night. Breast milk alone may not satiate your baby at her age. Try giving her a filling meal at bedtime. This could be a semi-solid like sooji porridge, dalia, khichri with some added butter etc. If you child is not taking a good helping of solid food as of now, you could try supplementing this solid meal with a feed of top milk (undiluted toned milk) at bedtime. That would take care of hunger, one of the most common causes of disturbed sleep. Another common yet trivial reason is blocked nose causing a difficulty in breathing. This should be obvious by mouth breathing, nasal sounds and difficulty in breast-feeding.