OK, I don't usually post on forums, but could really do with some advice on the age-old question of sleep! I'm now rather tired of functioning on 5 hours sleep a night and looking at what I can do to to potentially help this tricky issue...
I have a 9 month old daughter who used to sleep beautifully through the night from 2 to about 7 months old, although we only just managed to drop the dream feed towards the end of that time. Then... she got a tummy bug, followed by a cold, followed by a huge growth spurt, a brief good week of sleeping through the night followed by teething, the whole family has just had a tummy bug and now she has another mild cold - she is essentially waking once or twice a night. She screams her head off and will quite happily drop back to sleep, but only once she's had a good go at her personal Friesian cow! I've just tried to bring back the dream feed in the last couple of nights, but that's not helped - last night she had feed at 10:30, then woke at 1:50 and again at 5:30, after which she wouldn't go back to sleep. I know that she is perfectly capable of settling herself if she wants to - it's been hard work, but she does this well during the daytime naps. She goes to bed easily at 7pm, whether she's dropping off in my arms or still awake when I put her down.
Options I'm considering:
- Controlled crying - she should be getting her nutritional needs by now during the day and this is probably just a habit she's got into with the various bugs, teeth etc - but then again, I can see there are 3 more teeth at the top that will be cutting soon.
- Giving her water instead of breast when she wakes at night
- Adjusting her tea time so this is later - currently vaguely on a Gina Ford schedule with tea around 5-5:30pm, bath at 6pm and final milk from breast at 6:30pm
Any experienced thoughts or ideas would be much appreciated!