Advice for reducing frequent night waking in a breastfed six month old

[MarLiz2026]

My 6.5 month old still wakes up minimum 3 times a night and needs to be fed each time. The longest she goes is 3 hours and then she will wake up again. I have tried to soothe her in other ways, but this doesn’t work and she cries and cries and when it is the middle of the night I feed her.

Before people come at me - I know not all babies sleep all night and I know it is perfectly normal for babies to wake up in the night. I have no issue with her waking up, but I feel 3 times (on her best night!) is unnecessary. Sometimes she wakes up 5,6 times and I think this is far too many for her age.

I am looking for some advice on how to maybe reduce the amount of times she wakes up at night - even if it is just 1 less. I am so happy to feed her if I think she is hungry, but half of the time she feeds for 1 minute and then just falls asleep and uses me as a dummy.

Useful info:

• Baby has never slept through the night - always woken up several times
• Breastfed baby - doesn’t take a bottle
• Is on solids now
• Is in her own room now
• Always goes down well at night for the first sleep - quite good at ‘self soothing’ at bedtime
• Goes to bed around 18:30-19:30 depending on last nap wake up (have tried later & earlier bed times)
• Is teething - first tooth erupted a couple days ago (but as mentioned before I don’t think this is a teething issue as she has been like this for her whole life)
• First baby and I live with my husband

I have always fed her to sleep when she was a newborn etc. She is not fed to sleep for naps and I try not to for bed time although sometimes she does fall asleep. She can fall asleep somewhat independently for naps and bedtime, but when she wakes at night this does not work. I try my other soothing methods (talking, bum pat etc) but it just ends up her screaming inconsolably and I give up and feed her as it’s 3am and we’re all tired and I have neighbours etc.

I am sure the feeding overnight is the issue but please help me with advice on what to do. As I have made clear - super happy to feed her if I feel she needs it but most of the time it is like I am just a dummy.

I feel your pain. One of mine was
like this until 18 months, the rest weren’t a whole lot better! I co-slept and just got used to snoozing while feeding. Wasn’t easy but literally nothing else worked! I think with breast feeding you also function as the dummy/comfort sometimes even when they’re not hungry!

Reading your post it honestly sounds like you are doing everything right, so apologies in advance I don’t have any new advice. It’s really just to say that this is totally normal behaviour for a breastfed baby. 6 months is still so young, don’t be influenced by things you read about babies who may sleep better than yours, it will just drive you insane! The thing is you can’t know when they are or are not hungry, so trying to withhold feeds wouldn’t be a good idea.

As a fellow breastfeeding mum I do feel your pain. But I think accepting it just makes things easier so I hope you can do that. It’s understood that breastfed babies don’t just wake up when hungry, they do use feeding for safety/comfort so try to enjoy the idea that you are comforting your baby and helping build long term feelings of security which will help with their sleep eventually.

When my baby reached 6 months and sleep wasn’t improving I couldn’t face getting out of bed multiple times a night and sitting up with her so we started bed sharing. It is so much nicer feeding her lying down while still cosy in bed, and it doesn’t feel like as much of an interruption. I don’t think I would have felt confident bed sharing with a very young baby but by the time we started at 6 months I was happy. She is now 10 months and although sleep is slowly improving, with less wake ups (although still usually way more than 3!), we still end up bed sharing most nights for the last few hours and it means I get a decent sleep most nights.

I can really hear how hard you’re finding this. Though this sounds fairly normal for a 6 month old baby.

From my experience, if feeding to sleep works… don’t make your life harder by trying not to do it. Eventually they will fall asleep in other ways.

You can try some habit stacking to see if eventually you can switch. Play a piece of music or sing a song everytime you feed to sleep and eventually the song as well as the feed is associated with sleep time.

The other option is co sleeping. Honestly, this is how a lot of parents make it through night wakes.

I think teething does make a difference. Could easily be one of the causes of the 5-6 wakes Vs 2-3. Would you consider giving something like baby nurofen before bed on days she is clearly teething? My DD (just 8mo) manages teething well in the day because she is distracted by stuff, but definitely wakes more easily at night when her mouth is sore.

What is her daily food/milk intake like? I found 6mo really hard with both of mine because they need a lot of calories by then but were still mostly playing about with food. With DD she also started getting really distracted if fed in busy environments (and also fed less of teething) so for a while was making up for that with lots more night feeds. I had to be really proactive about offering milk and taking her somewhere quiet to feed during the day. And also medicating teething (anbesol is good) if she was refusing milk due to teething pain.

To add - I have also leaned into co-sleeping a lot now she is not tiny. I think it helps with self-settling because knowing I'm right there helps her to fall back to sleep when she partially rouses, rather than needing to be lifted and held.

At 6.5mo I was where you are with frequent night wakes. Now we are generally at 2-3 (but bunched at the end of the night, when sleep is lighter anyway (eg 4:30am and 5:30am with one earlier wake) and the very broken nights are much rarer.

Wakes at night at 6 months for feeds are normal. 5-6 wakes are not necessary. This is likely to do with sleep pressure and lack of independent sleep. Yes it is common in breastfed babies, but it’s not inevitable.

i know it’s not popular on here, but as you have asked for advice I will share some.

for me, separating feeding from sleep was what improved our situation.

There is nothing wrong with feeding to sleep if it works for you. But it can stop working. My baby started waking every 45-90 mins (end of each sleep cycle) and couldn’t go back to sleep without feeding because that was an association. Most of the time he wasn’t hungry, he just wanted to latch for 2 mins to get back to sleep. It was hellish.

Again, some people don’t mind this; it did not work for me. We were all exhausted. I tried bed sharing, the baby hated it and used to cry in frustration. All that stopped once we gave him his own space and he could put himself to sleep.

with appropriate preparation, sleep training could really help you here. If the baby is well, comfortable and falls asleep independently at the start of the night, this should get wakes down to hunger related wakes only.

What is absolutely key is that NO sleep training method is applied before you do prep work to ensure your baby is tired enough for sleep (and no sleep training during illness or active teething!). People mess it up by trying to sleep train undertired babies which results in lots of crying and no improvement in the situation. There is likely to be some crying if you do this, because you are making a change. But with proper preparation it will be minimal. Crying in itself is not harmful.

what we did:

1. before you do anything track all sleep for 7 days and average it to find out how much sleep the baby needs in a 24 hour period. This is your sleep budget.

2. take your budget and cap your daytime sleep to leave you with 10-11 hours to use at night (most babies can’t do a 12 hour night so ignore the noise about that online) Ie if your baby sleeps 13.5 hours per day on average, you could have 2.5 hours over 2-3 naps and 11 hours at night.

3. last nap to end minimum 3 hours before target bedtime.

4. wake your baby at target wake time no matter how the night went - no lie ins or extra naps compensate for a bad night, this perpetuates this issue. You will have a tired couple of days but this builds sleep pressure for bedtime and helps the baby get to sleep.

5. once your routine is in place, last feed finished 30 mins before bed - bedtime routine - baby into cot awake (no dummy) - apply a sleep training method. this does NOT have to be cry it out. I recommend looking up “the sleep wave”; consistent, lots of comforting of the baby.

6. I used to then do two dream feeds in the night where I’d sneak in about half an hour before his most usual wakes and lift him and feed him and pop him back down before he could wake from hunger. After a few nights of this he would just stir and go back to sleep in a few seconds at any wakes between the feeds because he just knew how to do it. One night I forgot to set my alarm for the first feed and he slept through, so I switched to one feed. He then dropped this feed himself around 7-8 months (this is early, he took to solids really well, 1-2 feeds still normal, and I wouldn’t have tried to actively night wean an independent sleeper before a year).

In hope this helps. Research shows that by age five there is no difference in the sleep of children who have been sleep trained vs not sleep trained. I was not willing to wait up to five years to improve our situation. This was the best thing I did for me and my baby. It has not affected our bond or attachment or anything like that. He is so much happier now he is well rested.

good luck, whatever you choose.

I combination fed, but at that age, baby would still wake for one or two BFs in the night. However feed to sleep suddenly stopped working at 6.5 months, so we had to teach baby to self settle.

Anyway, tips:
Baby can go in their own room at this age, we found that reduced the number of wakes
Send dad in for wakes where you don't intend to feed
Work on getting calories into solids at bed time: banana mashed with avocado, potato mashed with butter, a little bit of peanut butter in real porridge oats. Vegetable puree won't fill then up, but there are baby-friendly real foods that will give them complex calories that they can digest slowly through the night.

It is totally normal for a baby of this age to wake frequently - in fact 3 wakes per night sounds pretty good! If you're struggling with it though, perhaps considering safely bed sharing? It's been a lifesaver for me with both of my children, and many of my friends have found the same.

Good luck, it isn't easy, but will likely improve naturally as she grows older.

It doesn’t make it any easier for you but this realty is normal so not necessarily something you should use energy trying to change.

Having said that, have you perhaps reduced the breastfeeding too hastily in factor solids? I’d consider upping the daytime milk so baby is less likely to be hungry in the night.

Secondly they could sleep through one night when you least expect it so you’ve got that to look forward to. Could be next week, next month or a bit longer but it will happen!

Thank you! I have done a bit of co-sleeping, however I just found I still didn’t sleep very well as I was so aware she was next to me. I know a lot of people swear by it, but I don’t think it has been for me sadly. I don’t mind going into her room at night to feed her, I just have been feeling that she doesn’t ‘need’ the feed. It seems from a lot of comments on here it’s quite normal so maybe I am being a bit harsh or unrealistic, just hard when you’re in the depths of it 😅

Thank you! I am hoping one day soon she will just magically start sleeping through the night (although deep down I don’t think this will happen!)

She doesn’t have much to eat to be honest, I have just been trying her with different textures, tastes. I try her with dinner every evening and sometimes she has food at breakfast or lunch time but her main diet is still very much milk!!

Thank you. I think maybe I was a little too harsh/unrealistic on my post but when you’re in the depths of it I just keep feeling like this isn’t ‘right’ and she should be sleeping better than she does. I think the comments have made me realise maybe 3 times isn’t too bad, but when I keep hearing of so many mums with babies younger than mine and they “sleep through” or only wake up once it makes me think “what am I doing wrong?”.

Thank you for the support.

Thank you for the advice and tips! She is in her own room, I think I will start sending dad in to see if he can soothe her first and then if she can’t be soothed I will feed her :) thank you so much

Thank you for commenting! I do give Calpol & Nurofen before bed a lot of the time during the teething, it doesn’t make much difference sadly! I have also tried bed sharing and I just don’t think it is for me sadly :( I feel like I sleep worse with her next to me and despite the wake ups, I think we definitely sleep better in our own rooms! (She woke up even more when next to us)

I think I may have been a little harsh/unrealistic yesterday saying it’s too much and not necessary for her to wake up so much, but I’ve just really been finding it a lot. I think I find it more because it’s mostly on me to settle her due to the feeding element. I have been quite reassured by the comments that this is normal, and to be honest that has made me feel a lot better.

Thank you for taking the time to comment

Thank you. I think the comments have helped me accept it a little more - I was just feeling like it seems every other baby on the planet sleeps all night or most of it and mine still seems to wake up a lot. I was feeling a bit like “what am I doing wrong?” But luckily all of these comments have reassured me a bit. Thank you

Wow, thank you so much for such an insightful and helpful comment and advice. This is so appreciated and definitely something I will look into/try. Thank you for being so kind

I'm old but fully breastfed three. All woke during the night for feeds. The middle one slept through once I stopped breastfeeding at nearly one year old but the other two carried on waking for years😭 what I'm trying to say is that all babies are different and you aren't doing anything wrong!

I also didn't sleep well with them co-sleeping but did keep them next to me as didn't like getting out of bed in the cold to feed them and by the third gave up altogether🤣 double mattress and single on the floor and when they came in and fell asleep I'd roll over onto single mattress then I could sleep better. That worked best and wish I'd ignored all the advice from well meaning people and done that from the first! Whatever it takes to get as much sleep as possible🥱💐

This is unfortunately perfectly normal. She is also teething and has just started solids. My one who was formula fed was waking every 30 minutes! Every 30 minutes all night long at 6 months. It was a mix of normal feeding (she still had 2-3 bottles a night), plus teething pain, plus digestive issues from solids. It’s just a perfect storm at 6 months. Wait til separation anxiety kicks in next month too! The easiest thing was keeping them in with me so no trooping around the house all night. I got a lot more sleep that way.

I would co sleep in your shoes or with a cot next to bed

I know it's hard, tiring and frustrating but at 6 months she is still very young and that level of waking is normal.
Have you tried co sleeping? It is possible to do it safely and makes it easier to get some sleep . Having her in another room is exhausting and although I know the advice is you can put them in their own room at 6 months for many babies it's just too early.
I have two children I expected my first to sleep through from 3 months (I was very naive and that's what the books at the time told me!) I felt very stressed and more tired when it didn't happen. I never expected my second to sleep through and I felt so much better and less tired because I had much lower expectations. Which was a good thing because he was a terrible sleeper much worse than my first. . Eventually he slept through when he was 18 months.
I know it's hard but honestly looking back those years go so quickly