I'll try to keep this brief but I'm prone to rambling...
My ds is now six months. For the first three months he slept amazingly well, in some cases getting up to seven hours at a time. Then he hit the four month growth spurt. He is FF and was so hungry during that period that he would wolf down one or even two bottles during the night. He would wake every hour or so. Now we have settled in to a 'routine'. He goes to bed at roughly seven thirty-eight after his bath, settles with a bottle. Sleeps till eleven or so and then wakes every two hours or so. he settles with a small amount of milk. I don't take him out of his cot. I tried switching to water but he wasn't too thrilled with that. At about half six he is properly awake and we get him up. He never wakes up properly at all.
He sleeps in a cot in a room next to ours. I have tried co-sleeping but he wakes for the same amount of time and I just get less sleep. Currently DH and I are sharing night duties depending on who is working. He naps well during the day and his night wakings don't seem related to how long/many naps he's had.
So after all that, should I just suck it up and accept he'll cry? offer only water? Or just accept that this too will pass and he just has his own sleep pattern? the reason why this is such an issue now is that I am back at work part-time (finance reasons), I work very long shifts and have a long commute. I NEED MY SLEEP!
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Have I set up bad habits already for my 6 mo old?
springbokscantjump · 06/06/2011 21:13
I went in and offered water (she had a quick suck on a bottle but always stopped when she realised it wasn't milk). If she seemed to be teething (she has been for months!) I gave Bonjella/Neurofen, shushed and patted, picked her up until she stopped crying then put her down and left the room. She whined for a minute or two. A couple of times had to go back in and pick her up again. She the went back to sleep until morning. The wake up got later and later over then next few nights until she slept through. I was not expecting it to work, especially as she is BF so everyone said it shouldn't be me that went in. But DP works away and is so completely enthralled by her that he couldn't handle her even whimpering!
I decided at the outset that if she woke again in the same night I would feed her as I wouldn't leave a baby hungry but she never did. I was as sure as I could be that her wake ups were habitual and they were getting worse. But she did sleep through intermittently before the 4 month regression and could self settle. I would work on self settling at bedtime first so you know he can get to sleep by himself. He may well just sleep through then or just need minimal help to break the habit then.
Incidentally since I regaled you with tails of my sleeping DD she has woke up screaming twice this evening and she is 7 months now! 
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