I need help with my 6 month old

[IndigoTea]

Hi,

My 6 month old who has silent reflux (on medication) and a mild intolerance to cows milk wakes up at night, at least every hour for feeds or patting. I'm exhausted and really don't know what to do? Can anyone help please?

Thanks in advance

Indigo is this waking a new thing or has it been going on for a while? If its new it could be the 6 month growth spurt combined with the developmental leap.

How are you feeding Lo and have you recently introduced solids? Has Lo been checked for tongue tie? My DS was very much like this and it turned out to be tongue tie and upper lip tie.

This might help too

That's a great link, JJJ.

Indigo, I feel your pain - 8mo DS2 is a pretty awful sleeper and wakes up a lot at night for feeds. I can't get much into him during the day because he gets distracted from the boob (have tried all the usual no-distractions techniques but he's just as capable of being distracted by a blank wall) so I think he tanks up at night. I'm just gritting my teeth and chanting this too shall pass. Sincerely hoping he won't still be waking every 40 minutes from 1am when he's 18. Or if he is, he won't want a breastfeed .

JJ, thank you! It has been like this for over two months now, so it can't be Z growth spurt. He had both lip and tongue tie removed, though tongue tie has very partially grown back, but I'm not sure it could be that??

Zuleikha, it's good to know I'm not the only one! Any tips on how you survive? I've noticed that after he wakes up, he farts, so I'm considering giving a strict dose of gripe water before bedtime, but he hates it and doesn't want to get it down!

We co-sleep. It's not what I'd have chosen, but we have a relatively soundproof spare room so my DH and I have a deal where he deals with the older DCs at night and I take DS2 off to the spare room. Otherwise I'd freeze to death/go mad trying to get him to settle in his cot. He sleeps in it fine during the day and the evening, then everything goes to pot after the 11pm feed, usually. I think I've woken up in my own bed twice in four months.

Incidentally DS2 also had a very bad tie when he was born but it was fixed at six weeks. I don't think it's a feeding issue here. They do say that babies that have trouble sleeping are mad creative when they grow up.

I could have written this myself when my DS was 6 months old! I remember 12/13 times a night (despite not needing a feed - just a pat) being standard. This Website helped me an awful lot but the long and short of it was that it had nothing to do with the reflux and it passed all by itself. He's a fab little sleeper now (15 months)(unless teeth are coming in...).

To add in response to jilted, he did indeed have a TT and Upper LT so I second checking it out. We got his TT cut at 14 weeks which only helped for a couple of days and then he went back to normal. Lo and behold I have recently noticed that the TT in fact reattached even worse than it was before, which explains a lot.