5 month old still not sleeping at night

[preggos]

My 5 month old daughter still will not sleep at night. If we're lucky she will sleep for 3 hrs but she is so addicted to her dummy she wakes up all the time looking for it. I've tried putting her to sleep without it but she will wake up at some point looking for it and won't go back to sleep without it, she just screams for hrs if we don't give it to her. I've tried taking it away as soon as she goes to sleep and I still have the same problem. We only get about 4 hrs sleep at night and i'm fed up. Everyone I know with a baby her age sleeps pretty much all night. I don't know what else to try. any suggestions?

My nephew had terrible problems sleeping, they got a consultant in in the end. I think he was a bit older as she looked at everything, diet etc (no protein for his PM dinner) but one of the things that the consultant suggested was putting 6 dummies in his cot!!! This meant he could find one of them at any point at night. Really worked, along with the other suggestions. I think, whilst your daughter is still struggling, I wouldn't take the dummy away but you could try to make it easier for her to find?

5mo is still only a tiny baby so you're not usual at all. DD was still having 3hrly night feeds at that age, for quite sometime, certainly until she was eating solids for tea.

DD only slept all the way though (7pm to 6am) when she was 18mo! However we tried to not compare her to others and just tried to focus on her other qualities (very good during the day, not clingy etc). It's a pain and we tried a few techniques but no magic wand. We rode it out until DD was ready herself. However I'm pretty laid back and not one for intensive sleep training.

Things that helped:

• blackout blind and turning off the night light.
• we don't do a story as it wakes DD up
• we're still giving her a bottle of (cows) milk before bed.
• getting the temp right, sometimes DD was too hot or cold.
• we do whatever it takes to her herback to sleep. Sometimesit's tucking her, sometimes more milk or even comng into our bed. As long as we ho back to sleep, I don't mind. At 5mo you DC might simply hungry/thirsty.

Good luck, try to rest when you can or get your DP to help if you've got one.

Just to say ime and from talking to others it is very normal for a five month old not to be sleeping through.

That said it is really hard work and i hope you find a solution. Fwiw we never did any "sleep training" and ds started sleeping through of his own accord at 15m, they all get there in the end...we just have to find ways of coping in the mean time. Good luck.

I can only add to what's been said. DS is still not sleeping through at 7 months. I get a good 4-5 hours from 7pm but then he wakes every 1-2 hours until 6.30 am.

5m is very small, very few of the babies I have known slept through at 5m.In fact my dd has only recently started sleeping through a nearly 4!

I have a 5 month old too, she sleeps fro 7pm - 11pm, up for a feed and then up again at 2-3amish for another one, up for the day at 6.45am. I know that's not much help to you , just wanted to let you know you not on your own.

my ds didnt sleep through until 18 months. Some babies are better sleepers than others.

5 months is still very little and you'd be surprised at the reality of what some mums/health professionals class as "sleeping through"!! i see it as 7-7 (or thereabouts) but some class midnight until 6 as sleeping through! Often mums tend to stretch the truth about this issue at baby groups and the like...one reason I never went to them. dd slept through at this age, ds didn't, up once or twice in the night for bf. I decided to sleep train him at 7 months, worked a treat.

I'd wait until she's fully weaned onto 3 meals a day with supplementary milk and decide what to do about it. You could do sleep training or wait until she's "ready" bearing in mind that may be into her 2nd year! Can't advise re dummy as never used them.

Sorry, terrible iPhone words disaster in my post. Was getting DD down for a nap so posting one-handed in the dark balancing a huge 23mo DD on my lap! MN fail

"Everyone I know with a baby her age sleeps pretty much all night"

Then you either know some unusual babies or some truth-glossers!! It's rare for a 5mo to sleep all through the hours of darkness - also, remember that the technical definition of 'sleeping through' is five or six hours at a stretch. What it actually means is 'sleeping through a feed' - you will often hear it used to mean sleeping all night, which babies franky aren't supposed to do - they need to eat!

For the record DS is 8m and still wakes between four and eight times a night (and by night I mean 9pm to 5am - which is when the day begins as far as he's concerned). DD didn't sleep for more than 3 hours in a go until she was about 10 months old and big enough not to mind night-weaning too much!