6.5 Month old sleep issues! Help needed!

[Flybygirly29]

So my youngest has always been a pretty good sleeper until about a month a go.

She was EBF and woke maybe twice a night to feed and that was usually around 12 and 5am sometimes better.

For the last month she's been sleeping from 7 until 10 and from then until 5am she wakes every couple of hours sometimes it's every hour!!

Me and DH are knackered!!! We've tried everything we can think of!! We've tried a sleepyhead, white noise, night light, no night light, a fan, Ewan the sheep, comforters, feeding more in the day, putting her on more solids in a day, a bottle before bed (that did the trick with our eldest!)

She feeds every two hours in the day and has three small meals a day.

The health visitor said she thinks it's behavioural and she doesn't need to feed that much at night because she eats so well in the day. She suggested getting DH to go in to settle her so she doesn't smell milk which doesn't make a difference really.

I'm properly at my wits end now with a 2.5 year old who thinks she's 25 and a baby who thinks sleep is for losers!!

Has anyone got any advice that could help?? Xx

Also just to add she has a good bedtime routine with bath, story and a feed and she has two or three good naps a day totalling about three hours xx

Flybygirly, it is behavioural. She's got into a habit. It's time to let her cry it out when she wakes. Don't give in. I battled with something similar and CIO was the only thing that worked. Last night was the first night she woke up, only once where she didn't cry. She just got grumpy. I turned on some music and rubbed her back. I didn't pick her up or feed her and after sometime she comforted herself and went off to sleep. She slept 10hours in total. At 6am she woke up and I decided to feed her then thinking it was best after a good ten hours. Delighted with her.

It took some time to sort her sleep out but it has worked. You'll also notice through all the horrible screaming (which made me cry at one stage), baby will take a break. That's a sign it's behavioural, she wants comfort rather than needs real attention. Don't give in. You'll all get a better nights sleep and it won't do any harm to her in the long run. She'll just learn to self soothe which we all do to get ourselves to sleep every night! Good luck.

Honestly, she's so small that calling it behavioural seems terribly mean. Dd did similar until 16 months but I think she really did just need that comfort until she learned how to get herself back to sleep

If you are associating behavioural to mean bad behaviour done intentionally to aggrivate you then that was not my intened use of the word. You could also call it a habit. Habits are created by reoccuring behaviours. My baby is a good little girl she always smiles and is very happy and healthy. She is in no way badly behaved. No baby is badly behaved, they do not understand right from wrong.. What they do understand is the responses they get from crying.... Some toddlers and children on the other hand know right from wrong.... Now that's another kettle of fish.