6 month old suddenly not sleeping

[mermaid101]

Hi, I'm a new user and this is my first post. I have a 6 month old baby girl. I've been very lucky and she has been an excellent sleeper. She has managed to sleep through the night since she was about 7 weeks old.

However, for the last two weeks she has been waking roughly every two hours. She goes back to sleep pretty quickly when I pick her up and comfort her but then just wakes up again.

She has recently got two teeth, but she doesn't seem bothered by them: no red cheeks or gizzling during the day. I tried giving her Calpol last night, but it didn't seem to make any difference.

Does anyone have any advice? I'm not sure why this is happening and what I should do about it.

No real advice except to say I feel your pain!

DD2 is 7 months and about a week ago I could have written your post word for word. Right down to having slept through early.

We seem, hopefully to be coming through the other side of it - we managed a 4 hour and a 3 hour stretch last night.

I'm honestly not sure what caused it - teeth, or adjusting to solids, or finally getting the hang of sitting up by herself.

Whatever it is - we seem to be nearly on the other side of it. So my only advice is: hang in there, hopefully things will settle down soon!

Oooo my first ever reply to a post!

Thanks vvviola. It's good to know I'm not the only one. And that there might be an end in sight. Did you do anything with your baby, or did you just try to comfort them until they were calm enough to go back to sleep?

I've read about pick up and put down and controlled crying but I'm not sure if I would/should try these?

Good luck. Hope you get your amazing sleeping baby back soon x

It's a phase I think. Dd1 was like your lo but then went haywire at about 6 months (and had similar blips at 8 months and a year). She did however always go back.

I think at 6 months I did the pick up /put down settling. Later (ie A year or so) I did controlled crying but only once I was clear it was not as she was unwell, hungry etc.

I found the book called the wonder years helpful as it was good at predicting these unsettled phases - they usually coincide with some development phase.

It is absolutely normal for this to happen. My previously good sleeper started waking every hour. It's the 6 month growth spurt and your baby, as well as doing a lot of physical growing, has a huge mental/brain growth spurt going on too. They are realising that they are 'other' than you and the world is a big and scary place right now. Lots of cuddles and snuggles and in another couple of weeks it will all have settled down.

Thanks so much Gigondas and worldgonecrazy. That's reassuring. I gusess I've been so lucky until now. I was really worried that I'd had my good times with nights and that now I was going to be awake forever more!