Sleep train, reeuced night feeds, or persevere?

[mumma2girlies]

My 6 month old daughter slept brilliantly until she hit 4 months. Then ever since we have multiple night wakings every single night.

She generally has her last feed (EBF) around 530/6pm, and then is asleep around 630pm. Each night then varies. She'll wake at some time from 10pm, and then every 2 (sometimes 3 hours). I'll be honest, I do feed her on each wake because I am so exhausted and know it's the quickest way to get her back to sleep.

My first baby (now 3yo) was down to one feed a night by 5 months and then slept through from 6 months so this is new territory for me! I don't know if this night feeding/waking is "normal" and she'll eventually go longer between feeds on her own.

She does seem to feed on each night wake, rather than just "suckling" which makes me think she's hungry, but only for around 5 minutes....should I keep feeding her back to sleep?! She feeds well in the day, I offer every 2 hours or so. We've started solids but only a week in so she's not consuming loads.

Also, she is still in our room....should I bite the bullet and move to her to her own room? Could we be disturbing her?

Thanks from a tired Mumma!

How often is she feeding in the a day @mumma2girlies? Is there any way that you can fit more feeds in when it’s daylight?

Yes that's completely normal. Your first baby was unusual in my experience. You shouldn't restrict night feeds under 12 months. I always feed to sleep and mine gradually reduced and slept longer once she ate more food. Own room is sometimes helpful! We did own room for first part of the night, then in our bed the rest.

I combination fed (last feed before sleep) and still got one or two wakes to feed a night at six months and I started solids early with a focus on the evening meal. I would bet your baby is waking for hunger not habit.

You just need to ride it out. Totally normal to be having night feeds now. Totally normal for sleep to go to shit as she is likely teething and you have recently started solids. You can’t sleep train a 6 month old. They need you still. But this was definitely one of the worst for sleep. I found it harder than the earlier days - even my one that was formula fed was waking every 30 minutes. Go to bed early and push through. Your partner takes your older one out during the weekends so you get a nap and gets up with them in the morning so you can catch up on sleep.

Night feeds at 6 months are pretty normal. If she’s going to sleep independently at bedtime I would look at how much sleep she’s taking per 24h and if it matches her actual sleep needs. For my baby we had a cap naps in the day and make sure he wasn’t going to bed too early or he would have long periods awake during the night, or wake early in the morning because he was undertired. Track her sleep for 7 days and work out how much she takes on average per 24 hours, and make sure her nap time and wake up/bed time reflect that.

Ie if she sleeps on average 13.5 hours in 24, allow max 2.5 hours of nap time, bedtime at 7pm, wake time 6am (or whatever suits you), and try to keep her awake for three hours before bedtime.

sleep training and night weaning are two totally different things - you absolutely can sleep train a 6 month old, but personally I don’t think night weaning is appropriate at 6 months. I sleep trained at 5 months after my baby started waking hourly after the sleep changes at 4 months, but continued to do two feeds in the night until he dropped these himself at 7 months (he was really into solid food once we started weaning).

@TinyMouseTheatreits generally on demand, and if she isn't "asking" I'll often be offering it too. Always when she wakes from a nap and often towards the end of her wake windows too. I don't think there's much scope to fit in any extra feeds tbh!

@Peonies12 thanks for the reply. I'm hoping once the solids increase then she'll be more satisfied over night and that'll help. And yeh my first is definitely high sleep needs, she still quite happily takes a 1-2 hour nap in the day most days and sleeps through 7-7am - I think she spoilt me in the sleep department 😂 I'll give it a bit longer and maybe take the leap with her own room soon and see how that goes 🤞🏼