7 month old waking continuously at night

[croft85]

Hello

My baby is 7mo and has always woken a lot at night for feeding (BF). I’ve been relaxed about all the waking as of course it’s normal and not all babies ‘sleep through’ like a lot of my friends babies have and do. Mine certainly doesn’t!

My husband often works away a few nights a week and I’m starting to struggle with the constant waking and she doesn’t show any signs of sleeping longer stints!

She goes down each evening at 7, but then seems to wake grizzling and eventually crying for a feed at 9:30. Tonight she’s woken at 11, 12:30 and it’s now 1:30am and I have her sleeping on me as she won’t be put down.

Does anyone have any tips to try and help her (and me) sleep longer? I’ve actually tried giving her formula a few times before bed in the hope it filled her up more (maybe a myth) but it didn’t change anything. She eats ‘ok’ with her weaning.

Anything I need to be doing that might get me some more sleep would be really appreciated!

She’s in her cot in our bedroom as no way I’m going to drag myself to her little nursery endless times a night

Xx

Is she warm enough? The nights have got colder recently.

What is her daytime nap routine? How does she get to sleep?

How much is she feeding in the daytime?

Have the night wakings always been this frequent or has her sleep deteriorated recently?

Thanks for questions @BubbleCoffee @rosesandsalvia @Handsoffstrikesagain @Petrov

Worth saying she is a very smiley giggling baby during waking hours. But we both need more sleep!

I’ve been putting her in a 2.5 tog bag with sleeves so wouldn’t want her in anything warmer.

She’s always been a bad sleeper but feel it got worse a few weeks ago when she had a virus/cough and she was sleeping on me more for comfort.

Day time naps - I put her in her cot at 9-9:30am depending when she woke up and she sleeps 40 mins. I’ve tried and tried to soothe her into next sleep cycle but she won’t have it! Honestly spent over a week pre-empting her stirring and shhhhhing etc but she ends up crying.

Lunch time she usually sleeps out in pram from 40 mins to 1.5 hours. I stay out walking if she’s asleep. Often she is home in cot but does the dreaded 40 mins then.

Cat nap 40 mins at 3:30pm ish. Don’t let her sleep beyond 4:30 ever.

Her morning and night sleep I usually feed her to sleep.

BF 7am
Food 8am
BF 11am
*Will be adding 3rd meal soon at 12.
BF 2pm
BF 4:30 pm (small feed usually)
Food 5:30 pm
Long lie down on bed in dark BF we’ve always done at 6:30-7pm.

At the moment as we are week 5 into weaning she still has rough purées. Mostly Annabel karmel combos and always ending with greek yoghurt and fruit purée. Ready brek breakfast with fruit.

Any ideas what I should try/change? Thank you so much for any help.

Do you feed/rock her to sleep or does she go to sleep in the cot by herself?

My 6 month old was waking literally every 35 minutes through the night and feeding every 3-4 hours at night.

We’ve just done sleep training and now that he is able to go to sleep in the cot he stays asleep much much longer. We were doing 2-3 night feeds plus a million other wake ups, now down to 1 or 2 feeds.

This may or may not be what you want to hear but my DD was very similar. I tried all sorts, then at about 9 months a switch seemed to flick and she started waking only once or twice (or sometimes not at all!) in the night. I hadn't really changed anything, I guess she was just ready. My nephew started sleeping much better at a similar age, so maybe it's just a developmental thing for some babies.

It sounds like you have a great routine! At 7 months I would expect her to need about 3hrs of daytime sleep, ideally with a shorter morning and a longer lunchtime nap, but if she is only doing 40mins at lunchtime, the she probably still needs the afternoon nap. You could try and get her to sleep without feeding, I would certainly recommend trying to get her back to sleep at night without feeding as much as possible. With our first who was a terrible sleeper, we night weaned at 11 months and he slept through pretty much from then onwards - but at the time he was definitely ready to go without, he couldn't have done it at 7months and I spent a lot of time and energy trying to improve sleep, which was all a bit fruitless!

@GemmaRuby yes I do feed her to sleep usually. Started a bit of sleep training but there’s lots of tears. Glad to hear you’re down to 1 or 2 feeds I will look forward to that!

@3ormorecharacters to be honest it is what I want to hear as I know it’s fairly normal and I’m hoping time will sort it! But definitely need more sleep so thought I’d run it past everyone 😴

@rosesandsalvia thanks so much for your help. I think I will have to stop feeding to sleep, when I have tried she loses it and no soothing helps. That’s when I take her for a car sleep!
I’m definitely in that fruitless stage so I’m pleased to hear the night weaning at 11 months worked and you got more sleep ☺️

@croft85 how did you get on with this? My 7 month old wakes every 30m- 1 1/2hrs through the night. She went through a short period of sleeping well then hit the regression and got covid. Sleep has been very wakeful ever since. She often wants to bf back to sleep or be held and will wake when I put her down x

@Gingham17 funny you should message and I only saw this as got an email from mumsnet - this was 3 years ago with my 1st and I am now going through exactly the same thing with my 2nd who is now 8 months old!
My 1st ended up co sleeping with me after this for a while - it was the only way I could get sleep! That’s not what you want to hear though!

My 2nd even though he wakes a fair bit, I feel I have more sleep cues and sleep associations for him than just sleeping on me, or bf endlessly to sleep. Things like using a dummy, or patting him on the bottom with the same rhythm each time whether he’s falling asleep on me or in the cot (so he knows it’s sleep time), stroking his head to sleep when he’s lying in the cot, white noise I used with 1st has now been upgraded to a shhhhh shhhhh shhhhh noise and honestly I think that soothes him more instantly than white noise. I then switch to white noise sound overnight. If he wakes will quickly change it to shhhh mode.
He is also in a warmer sleeping bag than I had for 1st. Also wake him after 40mins during his 1st nap of the day so he has a better/longer lunch nap and therefore not too much sleep in day.

If your baby is waking lots in night it’s because they are waking up and realising they don’t have their sleep cue - I.e you or milk. So replace them with other things perhaps like the above.

Know this is not new info but hope it helps a bit. It’ll get better some way or another and also remember these phases are short and it will change! Xx