Any ideas why my dd might be waking...

[Fink]

...without actually knowing her?! Sounds silly, but am just looking for anyone else's experiences of what has worked/how long it lasted etc.

She is 6 months old, pretty much EBF, but in the early stages of BLW.

She goes to sleep every night fairly easily sometime around 7.30ish and sleeps through till about 10, then wakes every hour for the rest of the night. When she wakes, she can invariably be fed back to sleep within 5-10 minutes, or sometimes she will go down again if we just replace the dummy and give her a little stroke (works sometimes, not others). Either way, she'll be up and crying again in an hour.

I'm not really sure why it is as she's not properly up and active, just semi-waking and grumpy (e.g. doesn't properly open eyes, sit up or any of that). Have considered all the usual room temperature/number of layers, nappy, teething pain etc but to no avail and it's the same EVERY night! Any ideas as to what could be causing it and any solutions or am I just gonna have to join the no sleep for years club (and be really envious of the Mastermind woman who could apparently still mentally function in this state)?

Is she actually eating any solids? It sounds like my DS when he gets wind - he thrashes his head from side to side sometimes, but his eyes are usually half shut and grizzling rather than full-on crying. It got a lot more frequent when he started solids at 6 months (BLW too, and he was scoffing it down from day 2!) but seems to have cleared up now by 7 months.

Mind you, just seen it's every hour. Could it be to do with needing help to get back to sleep after the end of each sleep cycle? I sympathise, my DS wakes after 45 mins at night, then every two hours.

She could be overtired so needs to go to bed a bit earlier. How are her naps in the day? What time does she wake up?

So you feed her to sleep at bedtime? Does she pass out really quickly on the boob? If so, definitely need an earlier bedtime. I'd aim for half an hour earlier, see how that goes and maybe try a bit earlier still.

My DS2 - same age, excl BF and also early stages of BLW. Was waking up 3 times a night until last week when we put him in his own room in a bigger cot. Now he is generally sleeping 12 hours a night and has only had a couple of nights when he has woken for one feed. He is so early stages BLW that I think he has sniffed, licked, smeared, dropped more food than he has eaten so I think the only difference is his sleeping environment has changed rather than any solids contributing to more sleep.

Thanks for the advice all.

AngelDog - this preceeded the starting of BLW, it's been going on a couple of months or more so I don't think it's wind, but you could be onto something with the sleep cycles, I hope it will pass soon!

Igglybuff -She does pass out on the boob at night so we changed her bedtime to make it later. She was going down about 6, but we thought that might be why she wasn't sleeping in the night so we pushed it back and let her have another nap in the late afternoon. She generally wakes up around 5.30am, but I can sometimes persuade her to go back down till about 7 by co-sleeping, then naps around 8.30-10, lunchtime and later afternoon, although the latter two can merge into one mid-afternoon nap. You're right that she is overtired by bedtime so I'll consider moving it earlier, but she always sleeps really well for the first three hours or so, it's only after that she's up every hour. I will look into pushing bedtime forward though, thanks for that suggestion.

Sazlocks - you're so lucky! I'm with you on her not having eaten that much so I don't think that's changed things yet, but I thought at about 4 1/2 months that she might sleep better in her own cot and her own room cos maybe I was waking her with my noise; hasn't worked for us yet! She did once sleep through, at about 5 months, but it was a one night only spectacular never repeated before or since [tired grin]

Fink we find if we put DS to bed too late he'll have a good first half of night then it's all over the place for the second half!!

Fink, I'm probably not the best person to give you advice on this as DS is nearly 12 months and has never slept through (not even until 5am) in his life, but could well be worth looking at the No Cry Sleep Solution (look on amazon), especially if DD is falling asleep on boob. Also, please ignore anyone who tells you that she will never need feeding again at night past 6 months. I think its more individual than this. We found DS was hungry at night until about 9 months and then it was a bit of habit breaking until stopping night feeds at about 10 months (and 5am is now morning in my book...). Oh and maybe she's teething? When DS started waking every hour that was usually what it was and he was always worse before a tooth broke so it took a while before we knew what was going on.
It does get better, DS often has better nights now where he'll do a 6-7 hour stretch (which is technically sleeping through in the first year but no-one tells you that and instead leaves you feeling shite because your baby isn't doing 7-7 - but not that I'm bitter or anything....).

Good luck with BLW, has been fab for us, DS now wants to hold his spoon and eats tons.

Fink, I also find that if DS goes to bed very late he will sleep through the first few sleep cycles, but be up lots later in the night.

Hmm, I may be really stupid but I just didn't consider that she might be over-tired, we've tried putting her to bed anytime between 6-7.30, which doesn't seem late to me, so I didn't think of it, d'oh! She does fit the pattern you two mention though, so we'll have to see what we can do (I can't put her to bed any earlier without altering naps as well so we'll have to rejig things a bit without getting into my bugbear of 'scheduling')Thank you!

Thanks as well to you, carve, that was really reassuring. IKWYM about 5 being morning nowadays, I still remember pre-baby weekends where 10 or 11 was not unheard of...[wistfully dreamy smily]. I'll look up the book. I think she may be teething as well (2 nights ago she was up practically all night), but this has been going on before, after and during getting her first 2 teeth so there's something more to it than that. Thanks though [thumbsup].

You might not have to change naps much. At that age my DS could nap around half 3/4 and still need bed at 6/half 6! He only had short ones of 45 mins though.