really inconsistent sleeper at 7 months, what am i doing wrong?

[Koist]

My DS has a really irregular sleep pattern. he can go to sleep during the day on his own, no cuddles or rocking etc but will sometimes sleep for 20 minutes, sometimes for over an hour. At night we have a good bath and bed routine and he goes to sleep at 7pm without a problem. But i never know from one night to the next what he will do. some nights he wakes crying and it takes anything up to 2 hours for him to sleep again, some times he sleeps through to 6.30am, sometimes he wakes at 5am giggling and talking but can be rocked off to sleep again til 7am. I am still feeding him at 10pm, but not when he wakes at night. Should I drop this 10om feed? How will I know if he wakes from hunger rather than just because he's in one of those moods? Any help at all on how to have consistent nights - sleepy ones hopefully - gratefully received.

[puffling]

How long do you leave it before going in to him? DD has had phases of this. I 'll go in if she really starts crying or if she calls for me, otherwise I wait 5 mins-ish for her to stop.
How much sleep in the day? Abd how dark is his room?
I phased out the 10pm feed at that age. he probably doesn't need it especially if he's had a good tea and lots of milk before bed.

[MrsTittleMouse]

We started trying to get DD to go through the night at 6 months (when she was definitely capable of it), but it took until 10 months for her to sleep through reliably. Each time the waking periods started up again, we went back to CC (other methods didn't seem to work). Do you BF? We found that switching to FF at night helped us to work out whether the feeds were habit or hunger (they were habit), although when you're used to just latching them on, heating up bottles etc at 2am is not fun.

[puffylovett]

I'm having the same problems !! ours started a couple of weeks ago after a bad cold, when he experienced co sleeping, and now i can't get him to put himself to sleep at all, not without one of us half dangling over the cot cuddling him !!

for the record, though, there's a few threads on this at the mo, so it must be one of those '4 month' things.. where everything goes awry.

No naps at all yesterday and he's only slept for 10 broken hours last night (normally 13)

sorry, thread hikack over, just wanted to let you know you're not alone !!!

[moondog]

I breastfed and didn't expect anyone to sleep through until 12 months.
Their stomachs are tiny.They need little and often.
The only reason formula fills them (sometimes) is that it is thick and claggy and sits in the stomach like a brick.

Personally,continuing to breastfeed through it was a no brainer to me and as Tittle says,the faff of bottles is hardly worth it.

We had the baby in with us (cot by the bed) and when she woke,with a quick b/feed,she was done and dusted in 10 mins.

[BlueberryPancake]

Seven months is a tricky period I think. THey are learning so many new skills. Sitting up, some are starting to crawl, new food, taking in more stuff from their environment, growing up so quickly... I think all that is messing up their sleep. If you try to stick to a bedtime routine, things should settle down. Then (with DS1) things got back to irregular sleep paterns when he started pull himself up in his cot - can't remember how old he was, about 9 months I suppose), that really messed things up!

[sheepgomeep]

Even switching to formula wouldn't guarantee sleeping through the night.

Both dd's ff = crap sleepers

[Koist]

It's good to know I'm not alone - you get to thinking that it's something I'm doing / not doing, especially as DS1 was such a good sleeper (slept from dream feed til 7am at 7 weeks old and we never looked back). DS2 woke again last night - we went in after 10 mins to try and calm him, and then basically did CC for the next hour til he fell asleep on his own. Then he woke 2 hours later and the same again for 45 mins. It doesn't seem to matter how much sleep he has in the day - never more than 3 hours, often a lot less, and his room is very dark. He is totally formula fed as he was tongue tied when born and never learnt to latch on properly. I'm thinking of stopping the dream feed tonight - it's about the only thing we haven't tried - and just power through. It's so hard when I have to get up at 6.30 for work though!!

[MrsTittleMouse]

Sorry, should have made it clear that the formula was not to hang around in her stomach to make her sleep longer. It was to find out whether she really needed the milk. She always preferred BM and the night-time feeds were just because she fancied a snack and a bit of attention. The only way that we found this out though was to try formula; she took less than an ounce a feed!
When she was younger I was under a lot of pressure to FF her at night to get her to sleep through, but I always stuck to BM to keep my supplies up (turned out that the relatives offering this advice ended up with supply issues and had to completely switch to FM quite soon after). However, on the odd occasion that she was FF (because she was being babysat), she still work up at the usual times, it made no difference.

[MrsTittleMouse]

woke up, not work up!