Possibly silly questions about sleep training

[Luckyelephant1]

I have a 6.5 month old who wakes up every 1-2 hours. I need this to improve and have decided I will need to do some form of gentle sleep training. I'm not doing CIO but maybe something like the chair method (where you initially sit by them and slowly move further away each night) or shush pat etc, haven't quite decided yet.

My question is, pretty much every method says do your usual bedtime routine but put them into bed drowsy but awake to break the feed to sleep association. But the thing is, our bedtime routine has always been: bath, gentle massage, story (not always if shes really tired) and then a final long feed (I'm bf) during which she falls asleep. This is her longest feed of the day because she now barely feeds for more than a few minutes at a time during the day. So I'm not specifically using this feed to make her sleep, but she is actually hungry then i assume. So how am I supposed to NOT let her feed to sleep during this final feed?

Sounds similar to what I did - and this will get so much easier as you wean too. It’s a case of changing up the routine - feed, then bath and then bed I think.

DS was the same, it's horrific, the effect of months of not sleeping through the night, I remember crying with the exhaustion of a constantly waking baby.

I did the no cry gentle sleep training solution with DS and he was a fed to sleep baby. If I took him off before he was finished he woke up and he would fight and get more woken up and then wouldn't sleep, there was no way of keeping him drowsy, so I just stuck with the feeding to sleep and did the lying in the room when they wake next to the bed bit and the no talking to him. It probably took longer, but I stuck with it and it definitely helped, and he was brilliant at sleeping once he got a bit older, which i think was due to the training. He learnt to go to sleep at bedtime without milk when he stopped breastfeeding at 1.

But at that age the best thing that worked to get him through the hourly night wakings by far was the white noise of a tower fan in his bedroom. It was life changing, I would have it on in December pointing at a wall with the radiator blasted up as it meant he slept.

No advice on that OP from me - DS is 22 months and still has a bottle of milk to fall asleep with.
Sleeps through the night and doesn’t have a bottle any other time of day… I’ve picked my battles there

I thought most training methods like feber are only considered to be suitable from 12 months.

I'm wondering if she has her feeding routine mixed up, and is waking often to 'catch up' at night, as you're saying she barely feeds much in the day?
Could a dummy help her settle if it's a comfort need, and if she will take one?
Is your DD in her own room or still yours? My oldest DD was similar...moved her into her own room when she outgrew her crib at 7mths, but she didn't settle well at all.We took the sides off the cot and moved it right next to the bed like a cosleeping crib.I could then feed her next to me lying down on the bed and kind of scooch her across gently across more into her cot when done, so she stayed settled as she was not being 'put down' or left in a different room.She still woke fairly often but it made it easier as she settled back more quickly and I didn't have to keep getting out of bed.Alot of the issue can be them waking in a different place or position to they fell asleep in, so that resolved that confusion as she was still lying in her bed and I was still next to her. x

Thanks for the responses. @Mummyof287 I think you might be right about the feeding routine. In the day she just loses interest in feeding after a few mins even in a quiet room with no distractions. Her night feeds are much longer. I'm hoping with weaning as she starts to eat more it will keep her fuller so she's not catching up at night.

So she's still in our room in a bedside crib but we are planning to move her into her own in the next week or so. Currently I feed/bounce her to sleep on birth ball and she goes down for a good 2-2.5 hours around 7.30pm. She then wakes for a feed and generally will go down in her crib easily again for another 2 hours.

After that, so around midnight, every night is unpredictable. Sometimes she'll wake for a good two hours thinking it's playtime and babbling away. Other times she'll sleep but wake up every hour crying so I feed her. So from midnight I end up resorting to moving her into our bed to cosleep and feed lying down because I'm just so tired- at least that way I don't have to physically get up. Her morning wake times are also unpredictable, usually somewhere between 5am and 7am. It's strange because we have a daytime nap routine pretty much nailed so I don't know why the nights vary so much!

How do you settle her to sleep for naps? There is no need to stop feeding to sleep if you don’t want to.

The issue with starting any new sleep ‘training’ approach is it tends to be harder than whatever you are currently doing and will take longer than what you’re doing now. There are some different things you can look at before you start one of these methods.

1. Get wake up time consistent. If you want her wake up time to be, say 7 then when she wakes before then treat it as you would a night wake, settle her and try to get her back down until 7. If she’s sleeping later than the wake up time you’d like then wake her at your desired time.
2. How much is she napping in the day? How many hours of sleep total in 24? (Her feeding during a night wake is included as sleep, as she is still mostly asleep while feeding).
3. Get outside every day (earlier in the day is better but any time is good). Even if it’s just for a short walk. Exposure to sunlight even on overcast winter days helps to regulate the body clock.
4. The bedtime routine sounds brilliant. How long is it from the start of the routine until she is lying in bed?
5. Turn off any screens in the house 2 hours before bedtime as these emit blue light which disrupts the circadian rhythm.
6. Try feeding in a quiet calm room in the day to encourage her to take more - she may be reverse cycling.

Good luck!

Give her her "bedtime" feed downstairs with the lights on and plenty of ordinary household noise, then take her upstairs to do bath and bed. That's what we were advised and it worked. You're meant to do that anyway once they get teeth as the milk can be bad for them- best to brush after last milk.