6 Month Old Sleep

[Kenmar]

Hi everyone
This is a long post, my apologies…
I’m sitting here at 5am upset In my sleep deprived state and need some advice or even light at the end of the tunnel. I am new to this so I don’t know the lingo but here goes ….

My daughter turned 6 months on 6th May. As a newborn she slept long stretches between feeds and understandably at 3 months her sleep changed whereby she would wake a lot more and need the dummy to go back to sleep. This was fine as she would always get 19:00-02:00 then bottle and the second half of the night would be where I did the dummy run every 2 hours or so. This was fine as I go to bed 9pm so was getting a few hours in at the start. She was then starting to only get 19:00-00:00 before needing the dummy, again fine and sustainable for me. At 6 months we moved her to her own room and big cot. The first two nights were much the same and since then she’s up every hour from 19:00-01:00 then bottle and then 01:30-5 every 2 hours then I hold her or bring her through to our room, sometimes she stays in her room until 06:30. Everything is the same In her room in terms of complete darkness, continuous white noise, temperature, sleeping bag, comforter, dummy. She goes to sleep absolutely fine, after her bath time routine and bottle she’s placed into her cot awake and rolls around for about 10 minutes then goes to sleep. She has one tooth and we are waiting On the second but I know she isn’t in pain as she sleeps perfectly when co sleeping and nights where we have given pain relief there hasn’t been a difference.
I’m just struggling because I am a FTM and it’s been drummed into me that a baby must be placed down awake and take themselves off to sleep. She does this already !! Sometimes recently at 11pm she’s not gone back to sleep with the usual dummy pop in so I’ve been holding her and placing her down asleep but apparently this can be scary for them to wake up in a different place to where she went to sleep so I don’t want to do this but these Instagram accounts drum it into you that if you do this you’ll need to do it every sleep cycle.
All I see is babies with dummies or even toddlers with dummies and everyone speaks so highly of them so I don’t want to have to be the one who has to go through the torture of removing this comfort from her but I know people will say this is the problem as I’m doing the dummy run every hour. The strange thing is we just had 3 nights of 19:15-23:00 then quick dummy run then back down until 02:00 so this was a great improvement so I know she can sleep longer stretches and still use a dummy to settle to sleep initially. I really don’t want to take the dummy away until she’s older. I’ve tried every combination of daytime sleep, extending it, cutting it back, barely having any, having lots, nothing changes nights currently. She’s on a 3 nap schedule. Awake windows are all appropriate for her and for her age.
All these Instagram sleep accounts say about overtiredness causing night awakenings or under tiredness and all their courses are aimed at not feeding or holding to sleep which I don’t do so I don’t want to purchase a course and feel I’ve wasted my money. I don’t know where I’m going wrong. Luckily I sleep the moment my head hits the pillow so the dummy run isn’t too disrupting whereby I’d be up for ages but I can’t even go to bed when she does as i would only get until 9:30 before the first dummy run.

Has anyone been in this position?
Does sleep just get better with time?
Did your baby learn to put the dummy in themselves or be able to link sleep cycles if it’s fallen out?
If I give in and co sleep will this be us until she’s 4?
Any other advice?
Is this maybe a regression or early separation anxiety? - I use a cuski comforter In her cot and I wear it all day

Hi OP, it really could be anything at 6 months, teething, separation anxiety, regressions, transition from milk to solids, learning new skills. The list is endless! All I can say is that people I know who have used dummies have put a few in the cot with baby dotted around so they can easily find one and pop it back in themselves. I'm not sure if 6 months may be a bit young for this though - they do learn, it can just take a while! If you want to stick down the dummy route you could maybe encourage reaching for things when you play with her? Other than that it really is a rollercoaster ride!

Please don't worry. All this is completely normal it's all just part of having a young baby ! Just do what you can to get the most sleep you can for now it really won't affect them in the future. We ended up having one of ours in with us every night till she was nearly two and then she went into her own bed fine. We went through this with all our 3 and by the time they were around two they alll Went to sleep in their own beds and slept pretty much through the night. I know it's exhausting but this is just a phase that they do grow out of. Just accept it for now and I promise it does get better. Good luck

It sounds really normal to me. I think the range of when babies start sleeping through is HUGE but the range of when people EXPECT them to sleep through is much smaller.

I think mostly it’s developmental and if you’re lucky you get a sleeper but there’s only so much you can do to affect it. The rest is a waiting game. At 6 months there’s so much happening to disrupt sleep, weaning, teeth, sitting, crawling etc etc etc.

My baby is only 10 months and at 6 months her sleep was very similar to yours. DD has always refused a dummy though so we’ve coslept and bf lying down since the 4 month regression and fed to sleep. Young babies just need their parents at night no matter how they go to sleep.

If you get more sleep cosleeping I’d say do it. There’s no reason you’ll be stuck with it till she’s 4. Do it whilst it works and if it stops working then you can change it then. I really struggle to go back to sleep after getting up so cosleeping literally doubled the amount of sleep I got even though it didn’t make that much difference to DD.

I think part of the struggle is your expectations. It's perfectly normal for your baby to wake multiple times a night, it's perfectly normal for them to go from sleeping through to waking up several times. With my first I spent so much time reading up on sleep when actually I should have just ignored all the "experts" and just done whatever we needed to in order to get a few hours kip. It was just wasted time and upset. I'd delete all these Instagram sleep accounts because they're making you miserable.

With my eldest I coslept every night from about 2am from 8-16 months because it was the only way to get enough sleep. She had a dummy we eventually ditched at 2.5yo, youngest has never taken one. I've cuddled both of them to sleep (6mo DS is currently asleep on me now). If your baby can self settle initially then that's great, you've managed part of the battle already but give yourself a break and just do what you need to.

Do what you need to do to get sleep, and delete those sleep accounts if they are not working for you. I feed to sleep (bf) and cosleep, that the only way both of us are rested. I started co sleeping at 6 months mark, and that's the only thing that lets us both have a reasonable sleep at night, and his wake ups don't bother me much as I feed lying down.
Sending strength.

6 months is a huge sleep regression. I’ve never put my girls down awake to go to sleep. I have a just turned 5 year old and a nearly 2 year old. When my 5 year old started school nursery over half the parents said they cuddle their child to sleep. It’s fine, it’s normal. Now she is 5 she has bath, story, kiss and then lights out and we go and we don’t normally her from her again until the morning. She sleeps fine. My toddler will do this too when she is ready but for now she is too young.

@Kenmar I could have written this exact post myself in terms of how my little one’s sleep has gone since being born so you’re definitely not alone in this sleep deprived bubble! It’s funny how people keep moving the goalposts when you have a baby, telling you three months they sleep better, then six months (for us it just seems to have got progressively worse). One difference with us to you is that we started cosleeping (probably around the four month sleep regression mark) and that was giving us a lot
more sleep for about two months. I have not long done my own post asking for advice however as even that isn’t working for us anymore in the last two weeks, my DS is still waking up practically every hour now in or out of our bed. Many have suggested controlled crying which is just not in my nature to do but I think he must be going through separation anxiety and none of us are getting much sleep so I’m hoping it might pay off if I try it