No sleep at 6 months - how many day feeds?

[pommedechocolat]

dd2 will not sleep at night despite being on three very good meals a day.

I am on my knees. I also hate bf currently and would love to move to formula but she is a bottle refuser. She also gets very distracted feeding but eats solids like a trojan.

Life is a bit grey and crap at the moment after 6 months of no sleep.

This is our routine - someone tell me where we're going wrong??

6.30-7 am - wake up (would love to bf here but she never wants to)
7.30am - breakfast
9am - bf
9.30am - sleep
11am - lunch
1pm - bf
1.30pm - sleep
2.30-3pm - sometimes small crappy bf sometimes nothing
4pm - tea
5pm - bf sometimes
5.45pm - bath
6.15pm - bf and bed (she cannot last past 6.15)
10-11pm - bf
2am - bf
4am - bf

One of the night feeds will also involve being awake for 90 mins or she will only settle for half an hour.

Cosleeping scares me - Im too tired and we get in bad positions so no feed lying down stuff. As I said before Im not a massive bf fan anyway and that is so far from how I want things to be.

Any suggestions???

I feel your pain. We have similar problems in this household.
Will she take water or formula from a beaker in the day? We had no joy with a beaker she had to suck but DD2 seems to be getting on better with a free flow tommee tippee beaker. I'm trying the tactic of getting more fluids into her in the day, combined with not feeding to sleep.

I've made the same discovery as you with a free flow beaker but its still only 1-2 oz really and if she wants to bf the beaker will not do.

I too am attempting to break feed to sleep. I am also leaving her for 3-5 mins when I put her down or when she wakes in the night and very occasionally she doesnt need anymore help.

We all need more sleep in the next 6 months - we're all always ill and dd1 is starting to look (and act) tired too.

Sounds quite normal for a six month old to be honest.

The only thing I would say is maybe she's having to much solids and not enough milk in the day and is therefore waking at night for it instead. Remember milk is still supposed to be there main food at this age and any solids should be in addition to milk not instead of.

Try offering milk an hour before solids.

It may not work some babies wake more then others and they will sleep when they are good and ready to.

Oh and your not nearly doing anything wrong, it's just your babies way, you can't make them sleep just give them a lovely sleep inducing environment.

If she's more interested in solids than milk, could you make all her solids very milky? Porridge, yoghurt, mashed potato, cheese sauce etc. So that she she is getting enough calories in the day time.