6month old split night sleeper. Can anyone help?

[glummum1988]

Hi all

Can someone please help / share some advice?
My little girl has started waking for her night feed (2am) and then will not go back to sleep for hours and pure refuses to go back to sleep in her cot. As I write this she is asleep next to me in my bed and so in the interest of safe sleep I am awake!
She is 25 weeks (just over 6 months) but was 7 weeks premature making her corrected age 18 weeks (4.5 months) and so it is a struggle to know whether she is going through a regression or not.
For 8 magical weeks she slept in her cot from 7:30pm, dream feed at 10:30pm and then waking once (between 1:30-3am) for a night feed and then would go straight back to sleep until 6am ish.
This has been going on now on and off for about a month.
Has anyone had similar issues? If so how did you resolve and does it ever end?
Thanks so much in advance. Xx

[FATEdestiny]

(have I just replied to this on another thread?)

How about trying to bypass the 2am wake by playing with the deamfeed.

If you currently dont give a dream feed, start giving one for a but to try to avoid baby waking hungary at 2am.

If you currently give a dreamfeed the then wakes at 2am for a second feed, try stop giving the dreamfeed to encourage just one night feed. She should be more tried at midnight 1am ish.

[glummum1988]

Hi

Yes sorry it is a duplicate as o am new here and tried to delete the other but was u sure how to! Thanks for replying :).

Have tried to eradicate the dream feed at 10:30pm but found she then woke at 12 and then again at 4am with 4am being her new wake up time!

[FATEdestiny]

What are daytime naps like?

Unsettled night sleep can be a result of not enough sleep over 24 hours, so not enough daytime sleep.

Also - you mention a dummy for going to sleep on your other thread. How awake is she when going into the cot with the dummy? Is he drowsy from a feed or being rocked? Or fully awake.

It might be time to seperate feeding and sleeping so that milk has nothing to do with going to sleep. Then to increase daytime milk feeds and night wean - so that you get baby to sleep without milk. The idea would be put into cot with dummy fully awake, so he goes from fully awake to asleep in there.

Incidentally, at 6 months, weaning will come into play. Make sure you increase daytime milk alongside also adding in solids for weaning. Don't decrease daytime milk when weaning because early weaning foods are low calorie (veg and fruit) and so you will end up with more hunger related night wake ups.

[glummum1988]

Day time naps are hit and miss although she never misses her morning 1.5hours from 8:30-10am. On a good day she then sleeps 45mins at 12ish and then 3:45-5pm. We have upped her day time milk but worry we are over feeding as this means 210ml...because of dream and night feed that means 6times a day. We are going to try and drop the dream feed tonight as you recommended.
So far she went down like a light at 7:20pm having played with her all her waking hours and she had a good nap day. Fingers crossed!

[glummum1988]

Just realised I didn't answer the dummy questions. It varies. Sometimes she doesn't even have a dummy as she's asleep after feeding but others she is fully awake and we use the dummy to get her to sleep on her cot.

[FATEdestiny]

Regarding the dummy - use it consistantly. Ideally ruse baby slightly if milk drunk (with winding) and settle to sleep with the dummy.

The dummy is the easiest and gentlest route to independant sleep. Be consistent and deliberate about its use ever sleep time. The aim is that dummy becomes the sleep she to trigger sleep.

[Indecisivelurcher]

My ds was like this and we ended up using a sleep consultant and doing sleep training at around a year old I think. There are two bits of advice I will pass on. The first is to say its not your job to get her to sleep. You can't make someone sleep. If you can, then just leave her to it in her cot. I appreciate may not be so easy if she's crying for example. So settle her and leave again if you can. If you can't, then be as boring as possible. If you interact too much then all you're doing is fueling this habit of being awake. So be boring. The second thing is, early to bed. Have a look at your wake times and nap times, and compensate for the long night waking with an early night. I spent weeks putting ds to bed at 5:30pm!!! It was ridiculously early but he needed to catch up on a sleep debt in order to sleep better.

[Babyboomtastic]

Yes, we have this. Sometimes it's every night for a while, sometimes a could of times a week, and sometimes just once a week or so. It started at 9m and w are now at almost 2. Urgh.

[glummum1988]

We tried to lose the dream feed last night but she woke up at 10pm and was very upset so we gave in, back to sleep at 11 in cot. She woke at 12:30 but I patted her tummy and held her hand and she went back to sleep within 5minutes. Back awake at 2am, fed her back to sleep by 3am in her cot. Woke up at 5:45. So slight improvement on the last few nights.
Do you think we should try and drop the dream feed again tonight or shall we try and wean the night feed? How do you actually wean the night feed? I have read to just keep reducing the milk (she is formulae fed if that info helps).
Thanks so much for all you help/advice all, so appreciated!

[Babyboomtastic]

At 18w corrected, I think she's going to need a might feed for many months still tbh. I think two feeds overnight is pretty normal at this age. Most people I know ended up with night feeds (formula until somewhere between 9-15m)

You may also be going through the 4m sleep regression. Your baby's sleep sounds pretty normal tbh. Sorry...

[FATEdestiny]

@glummum1988

Step 1 for night weaning is to stop feeding to sleep. This includes bedtime and naptime. You need to be able to get baby to sleep when she is not "Milk Drunk" (ie full tummy from a feed).

So move your bedtime feed to the beginning of your bedtime routine, not the end. For example feed baby while downstairs, then upstairs for bathtime, then nightwear on and story or whatever else you do. Then into cot awake with dummy and settle to sleep.

Likewise naps. Move your feed to feeding upon waking up. So bottle when waking in the morning, bottle waking up from morning nap, bottle upon waking up from second nap, and so on. At naptime, into cot without a feed, give dummy and settle baby in the cot.

You cannot expect to be able to night wean until you have a well established method for settling to sleep without milk.

[Indecisivelurcher]

I have just read your most recent post op and went back to re-read about your little ones age. To be honest she's still so little and this sounds normal. You're still in the realms of baby sleep patterns, so what you need to do to get through. Go to bed early yourself. Nap when the opportunity presents itself. Do little nudges towards good sleep habits as and when you can.

[glummum1988]

@FATEdestiny to be honest she is only fed to sleep at her bed time feed and night feeds, more often than not, she goes down for a nap around 30mins after her day feeds so I guess that's a foot in the right direction. You have been so so helpful and I am so grateful but can I ask one more question? As she's formula fed we worry about how much to feed her over night. She's on between 180ml and 210m during the day, should we also be giving her those amounts at night and dream feed? She has 6bottles in 24hours. I worry about over feeding her.

@Babyboomtastic @Indecisivelurcher I did wonder if this is normal because of her corrected age. It's so hard to know what age to follow because some of her milestones are actual age and some are her corrected age.

Thanks again for all the advice.

[Babyboomtastic]

It must be confusing with the two different dates. Tbh, there's also a sleep regression at 6k.

It's really normal though for babies sleep to get pretty good by 2-3 months and then get worse again. One of the things that surprised me about sleep is that it isn't linear. I thought that they progressively get better with sleep, but for many of us it meanders around, for some it goes backwards for a long time first (and then forwards, and backwards, and forwards and backwards again).

Sleep at 6 months might be worse than at 6w. Sleep at 18m may be better or worse than it is now (on balance it'll probably be better, but a reasonably minority won't be)

[FATEdestiny]

I worry about over feeding her.

What percentile is she for weight?

It's not unreasonable to give s 6 month old 6-8 bottles in the 12h of daytime, so none are needed at night. But given your DD is premature, she may be small and need night feeds.

[glummum1988]

@FATEdestiny not sure on percentile as we have not seen a health visitor since this lockdown started however we weighed her on our bathroom scales (so probably not overly accurate) last week and she was just over 14lbs which when we googled it seems to be roughly 2lbs under what a normal baby her age should be.

[Indecisivelurcher]

Well, both of my 2 were on formula by that age, Dd night weaned at 6m. But in hindsight I regret my choices to night wean and sleep train at 6m. Ds didn't night wean until 1yo and that was a struggle. They are all different. If you are feeding on demand still she should self regulate. If she's on more of a schedule and it's roughly in line with what's specified on the box then I wouldn't worry too much. Accounting for her corrected age, I wouldn't be thinking about night weaning yet personally. One feed seems ideal, two still fine, three probably a bit much or comfort feeding. That's my view.

[Indecisivelurcher]

Did you get a red book or similar from your hv? There should be growth charts at the back, you can plot the weight and it will give you a percentile. Or you can find them online.

[glummum1988]

@Indecisivelurcher just had a look at her red book and I think she is 25th percentile...if that makes sense? I am a first time mum so not sure about so much!
She only ever has her dream feed and one night feed. The box says 4-5 feeds at those measurements so I guess we are only a little over. She was spitting up a lot recently but in the last 2 days, no spit up at all so I guess we have got the milk measurements right now? We have quite a strict milk schedule which seems to work as she only gets a little ratty before feeds so we are anticipating them well I think.
Naps have been spot on today and we have filled the wake times with a nice long walk which she was awake for the whole of and lots of play time so fingers crossed for a good night!

[Indecisivelurcher]

Oh brill! I'm pleased you've had a good day. God luck for tonight. A good day that turns into a good night that turns into two in a row then three, that's how to do it. Don't sweat the set backs. It'll gradually work out.

[Indecisivelurcher]

Good luck, lol! Although you can pray if you want 😉

[FATEdestiny]

she is 25th percentile

That is little. I would not be confident in dropping night feeds yet. Also - Pay absolutely no attention to the "suggested amounts" on the tin. You cannot and will not over feed her. It is always best practice to offer baby more per feed than she will drink, and more feeds per day than she needs as a minimum. More milk is better.

I think probably your issues at night might be due to overall lack of calories (ie not enough calories over the last 24h, rather than just the last few hours).

I would try and up her daytime milk as much as you can.

[glummum1988]

@FATEdestiny ok will up all her feeds and then she can just leave what she doesn't want. Thank you so much for your help I am so so grateful!

@Indecisivelurcher thanks so much for the support, really appreciate it!