Please help - 5 month old dd waking multiple times

[melrose]

DD is my third so you would think I would know what I am doing by now, but it apears not! Really looking fr some advice as feeling desperate!

She was an angelic sleeper from birth, stettled by 7.30 from a few weeks and slept through till 5ish from 9 weeks until she hit 4 months. Then she started waking once, then twice a night and for the last week or so has woken every couple of hours. For the last week the first wake up hasgot earlier, was 9pm last night. She feeds (breastfed), falls asleep on me and settles back in her cot. I am not sure how i got to her falling asleep on me as was happy to go down awake.

Reasonably good routine, sleeps 9-9.40ish in the morning and for a couple of hours 12-2 ish, although in pram for daytime naps (mainly for convenience as have to do school run etc).

Really want to get this sorted ASAP so hope someone can help!

Not sure i can help lol but am replying as in similar position, my dd2 5 months has started waking more often recently, we have yet to have the luxury of her sleeping through but she used to wake at approx 1 am for bottle then streight back down till 7 - 7.30
am wondering if shes started teething as shes nt crying just groaning.

She also starte messing with her bottles in the day, so with this and the constant hands in mouth/slavering am thinking teething or hungry??

I have started weaning her last week as she is def showing signs so maybe she wants more food.

Tonight i am also going to try the baby whisperers 'dream feed' technique so with this and armed with teetchin gel will see how it goes

How did it go nicplus2? Any luck? I'm in a similar situation to you. Dreamfeed didn't work for me! Running out of ideas.

We were having similar problems; DS always slept well but suddenly around 5 months wanted feeding every three hours or so at night. He always went straight back to bed after with no crying or fuss, but the constant broken nights were really getting us down.

We asked ourselves whether he was actually hungry, and came to the conclusion that it was probably just habit; we'd always leapt out of bed and fed him the second he made a noise and realised he'd probably got used to shouting out whenever he woke up, getting a nice bottle and a cuddle and going back to sleep.

Our first step was to decide that we would only feed him at four-hourly intervals, so if he woke up before the four hour mark, we would just stroke his head etc to calm him down. Once we'd successfully moved the 10pm feed to 11pm, we started to ignore his shouts in the night, reasoning that if he'd had a bottle at 5pm, soilds at 6pm, a bottle at 7pm and a bottle at 11pm, there was NO WAY he was hungry at 2 or 3am - we decided we'd feed him 5am at the earliest.

That said, there's no way I would have left him crying. We were lucky that he just shouted for a few minutes and then gave up and went back to sleep.

It only took a week of this for him to get used to it; now he wakes up for a bottle around 11pm (or we dream feed) and then sleeps through until 7-8am. Often, I'll go into his room at 7.30am to find him awake, waiting patiently for me! The joyful kicks and smiles are the highlight of my day.

mmmm well she downed a lovely 7oz bottle at around 10.30 pm half asleep then woke at 3 for another one and then at 7.20 only ad to go in twice after the 3am one to pop dummy in!

Gonna give it a few nights see if it makes a diff, difficaulty it she seems to have no or never had any kind of consistency to her feeds!!

Today we had the 3am, 8.30am, 12.30 and then 6.30? so its like guessing games
Havent totally got my head round the weaning this time either have stuck to a bit of something at t time, but think i mite do a bit of dinner aswell.

My health visitor's advice was to get him up to three 'meals' a day. Also, during the day, he has a bottle every four hours, regardless of whether he 'asks' for it or not.

7am 7oz milk
8am Baby cereal
12 7oz milk
1pm fruit/veg mush
4pm 7oz milk
6pm Baby rice
7pm 7oz milk (doesn't always take it all)
11pm 7oz milk

easytiger you speak much sense can i ask how old is your ds now or how old when you were using the plan above?

Just read your post to dh and we both just agreed that atthem min our dd is ruling the roost ha ha

If you search back a couple of months there were loads of us going through the same. Dh and I were tearing our hair out when she was waking 5+ times a night and at least once we could barely get her back to sleep. I an pretty sure it was developmental - for us things improved a lot when she learned to roll tummy to back (had been going the other way for a while). However at the same time on the advice of a sleep consultant we started putting her in the cot awake at bedtime and sitting with her (no eye contact no talking) and did the same when she woke in the night except at agreed feed times. It worked really well and she learned to self-settle quickly. She's now 9 months and still a pretty poor sleeper once the clock strikes 3 or 4 I often have difficulties and since feeding her no longer gets her back to sleep we're trying to drop the last night feed, but we have had a whole evening to ourselves from about 5.5 mOnths so I really can't complain too much.

Best of luck all, it's a really common problem but it does get better!

Hey - we started at 5 months - he's now 6.5 months. I think we were lucky that he 'got it' so easily. Something else that I think helped was the darker mornings (so later wake-ups) and making him a bit warmer at night - we put him in a higher tog sleeping bag.

Similar problems here too, DD is 5 months and still waking more than I'd like in the night. Normally it's bath at 7pm although it normally takes until 8-8.30 til she's asleep - I have always had to bf her to sleep, but she would settle well, bottle dream feed at midnight, and then she'd wake up at about 3.00 and 6.00 when I'd bf her back to sleep.

Earlier this week we had the worst night to date: she went down at about 8.30 but woke at 11.00 and was difficult to settle - I got back in bed three or four times just for her to wake up again. At 3.45 she was finally asleep and I got to bed at 4am. However, the next day she rolled over (back to front) and also laughed properly, both for the first time.

I think I am also guilty of feeding her out of habit, rather than because she's hungry. I'd like to stop bf-ing her to sleep but I've been trying pick up / put down and it just leads to an hour or more of screaming, plus she wakes up sooner. It makes me wonder if bf-ing to sleep is so bad, as she settles so much better - but it does mean she won't go back to sleep if she wakes in the night. Wish I knew what to do for the best!

Donkey teapot, you sound like me.

DS will often self settle to sleep at night, but wakes in night and I feed him back to sleep when he wakes. I wonder if I left him to shout for a bit he would go back to sleep, but I don't want him to wake DH.

Scrivette my DP works with chainsaws and other dangerous machinery so I really can't let him go to work tired, which means I do tend to jump up as soon as I hear DD make a noise. I also wonder what would happen if I left her for a minute or two. Maybe whilst he's off over Christmas we will give it a try.

Things are going from bad to worse around here, even feeding her to sleep hasn't worked the last couple of nights, she has woken up 10 min after going down. Last night she slept til 3am but then woke hourly. I'm really stuck for ideas, it is obvious to me that what I'm doing now just isn't working, but I don't really know what to do instead. Am currently reading up on sleep training but I am not keen on the idea of controlled crying, and she's currently too young anyway.