6 month old wakes up an hour after going to bed

[Kate3150]

Without fail... I can set my watch by him. He will always wake an hour after going to sleep at night.
He used to be a great sleeper up until the regression at 4 months... now I’m awake 4-5 time’s a night with him. He’s exclusively breastfed, what makes it even harder is he only wants me to comfort him at night and I’m getting exhausted from this!!! My Husband is amazing and would gladly help out at night but I worry he’s using me for comfort and it’s going to be hard to break the cycle xx

[Betty98]

My 11 month old is still waking for feeds in the night (usually only twice) and I’m pretty sure it’s because I’ve always been too quick to offer it instead of trying to settle any other way. I’m quite confident I should have insisted my son try and settle himself but I’m not sure how to even do that! I’m way too soft.

Does your husband ever get up and try?? If I could tell myself something five months back I’d insist on trying this a bit more first. It would have been a bit painful in the beginning but may have been worth it.

But in answer to your actual question...
Has he been moved into his own room?
Does he have a comforter?
Is this a new thing?
Do you feed him when he wakes?

My son did this for about ten days when I moved him to his own room. And eventually it just stopped.

[FATEdestiny]

How do you get baby to sleep?

Ideally baby wants to be going from fully awake to fully asleep in the cot.

[Kate3150]

@Betty98- thanks for your reply.
He’s still in our room, I’d say he’s done it more since the 4 month regression.
The first time he wakes I don’t feed him. But anytime after that which could be every 2 hours on a bad night I do put him on the boob.
He doesn’t have a comforter... I guess he is using me for comfort.

@FATEdestiny- thanks for replying.
I have tried so many times putting him in cot awake but he just gets himself in such a state. I have to pick him up and either rock him or put him him back on the boob.
I don’t know what to do anymore.... he used to have a good block of 4/5 hours at start of the night but now he’s awake anywhere between 45mins to 60mins after going down.
We tried a bedtime routine with bath etc but he got so excited in the bath it made him too awake.
I need help ha ha xx

[Kate3150]

@FATEdestiny- sorry forgot to say I breastfeed him to sleep xz

[Betty98]

He’s probably doing it because he falls asleep whilst feeding, they wake up confused apparently. The answer would be to stop feeding him to sleep. I have relied way too much in feeding to sleep so I can’t help much with how exactly you do that! 😬

[Kate3150]

@fran200- thank you! Have just signed up xx

[FATEdestiny]

It's really important for good sleep habits that baby goes to sleep where they stay asleep. So the problem comes from falling asleep in your arms, at your breast and then being put down already asleep.

Naturally in normal sleep (for babies and adults alike) we sleep in cycles of light and deep sleep, with very brief periods of being semi-awake between cycles. In an adult this between-cycle wake may just involve turning over, maybe glancing at the clock then straight back to sleep. Evolutionarily, this wakefulness during sleep is there so that in caveman days, humans could stay safe even when asleep.

Now imagine if you fell asleep as normal in your bed. Some time later you semi-awake between a sleep cycle. You go to shift positions ready to settle back to sleep and suddenly realise... you're in the back seat of a car! The normal responce would be - What The Fuck!!! What's going on?! Why am I here? You would be fully wide awake pretty damn quick, no rolling over and settling back to sleep easily.

This is why going to sleep where baby stays asleep is centrally vital to good sleep habits for your baby.

[EMILYSSTAR]

I am in exactly the same position with my almost 8 month old.

He goes to sleep either feeding or being rocked and has just started going to sleep for DH occasionally in the last couple of nights with rocking.

Have tried multiple times to out him down in his cot while awake but he just get himself in a complete state. Tears, snotters and soaking in sweat.

I really want to get him to be able go to sleep on his own in his cot but don't want to have him getting into the states he is just now. I am at a loss as to how to achieve this also.

[AmeliaTaylor]

Similar problem. Almost six months. Waking almost every hour overnight needing rocking or feeding back to sleep.

We just used the ferber method for sleep training. If you’re not sure about its efficacy or harm there’s a good chapter in Cribsheet by Oster which goes through it. Basically sleep training works. And has zero evidence of any long term or short term harm to the baby.

It’s painful to implement, it doesn’t matter really which method you use as long as you’re consistent. We chose ferber purely because it has some good evidence behind it, it’s stood the test of time, it allows for check ins.

There will be a lot of crying but we’ve gone from waking up every hour all night needing feeding or rocking back to sleep and only ever sleeping from being fed or rocked to going down awake and putting himself to sleep within ten minutes at night (still working on naps!), and sleeping much better. Night four we got a six and then five hour stretch!

[crazychemist]

Oh, mine did this for ages. Most commonly when overtired, but some other times she’d do this too. Afraid I never fixed it and just became part of the routine for about a year until she just stopped doing it!