7 month old has NEVER slept through the night

[sleepdeprived62]

My 7 month old little girl has never slept through the night.We have tried everything it feels like and are almost at breaking point. We have had a bedtime routine for a while now and although she goes to sleep ok, its only a couple hours later she starts crying again. If you go in and settle her at this point she usually goes back to sleep but then it will happen again a couple hours later without us being able to settle her.She can scream for a good couple of hours. We have tried soothing her, leaving her to cry it out and nothing seems to work.Any ideas?

agree, I missed DD most nights as she was asleep when I got in, but her body clock seemed to need an early bedtime. Eventually we pushed it back further (and now I'm not working) as she was waking too early too. Just meant I got up a bit early to spend time with her then.

Are you only giving 3 bottles in the day then? My DS is 8 and a half months, and we have only been able to go from 5 8oz bottles in the day to 4 in the last few weeks. Now we do bottle at 6.30, breakfast at 7.30, bottle at 10.30/11, lunch at 1, bottle at 3.30, dinner at 5 and bottle just before bed at 6.45. Sometimes it feels like we don't really get a break between feeds and bottles but he generally sleeps 7.30-6.00. Might be worth trying upping her daytime milk?

Agree with everyone else though, she is still tiny! DS
does occasionally wake in the night- and if he doesn't settle quickly I will offer him a bottle- sometimes he guzzles it, sometimes not- I figure that as adults we have hungrier days than
others, so surely the same is true of babies?! Good luck though, nothing kills quite like lack of sleep!

Sleepdeprved- honestly- A LOT of them are lying, through their teeth, really- there's so much pressure on parents to have everything perfect, sleep is seen as something that babies should be good at, but it's like everything else- some are, some aren't, and they have to learn how to improve.

Be kind to yourself, and try and nap when you can too.

DS 22 months has never slept through. An feeding him back to sleep as we speak.

Around 7 months ds2 was having around 30-35 oz a day.

Now he does still love his milk, but going twelve hours with no bottle isn't for every baby, and like others have said 7 months is still very young.

I would expect a dream feed or an 11 o clock bottle at least at 7 months. (From bitter experience )

In fact thinking about it I think he had nearer 40 oz a day.

DD1 slept through at 11 months, but it was another 6 before she stopped getting up for the day at 5am. DD2 is 16 months and still going strong with the night wakings. Just adding that to balance out some of your friends' comments!

DS is 7mo and never sleeps through either

My DD had terrible ear issues, it might be a good plan to get your DD's ears checked for any signs of infection or glue ear. My DD did ot settle until she had grommets put in. She was two before she slept through consistently.

I don't understand how a bedtime can be too late for a baby, as long as you're not getting them up too early, and are letting them get enough sleep in the morning. How can it be too late to keep them up for a little bit longer to see the partner who's working?

The baby doesn't know what time it is. And we switch bedtimes twice a year (in the UK) with summertime anyway, and everyone adjusts (eventually!)

DS used to go to bed about 9 as a baby (and sleep till 8am, with a couple of night feeds).

Am I missing something here?

Aufanie: I never understood it either. But it was true. More than anything I think it was about being over tired when he went to bed which led to less good sleep. Similarly, if he slept more during the day, he slept better at night.

I know people who do have their babies in a good routine of going to bed later and waking later. But we never managed it. Bed at 8? Wake up at 5:00. That was always how it was for us.

sleepdeprived62 I know exactly how you are feeling. My DD1 didn't sleep for more than two hours at a time for the first six months and I became so overtired my vision was affected. I used to count up the hours and minutes sleep in 24 hours and if I managed to make it to 5 hours that was a very good night! We had lots of support from Health Visitors, tried routines, different feeding patterns etc. etc. etc. and in the end we were referred to Great Ormond Street Hospital who in those days had a sleep clinic. They found no medical problem at all and supervised us so that we had the backbone to make a prolonged attempt at controlled crying which took two horrendous weeks to work, to the extent that she began to sleep for longer periods but would still wake and grizzle a couple of times a night right up until 18 months, though we never dared go in, just listened anxiously via the monitor. When she was first talking she even shouted through the baby monitor at 3 am "Head stuck". I rushed in only to find her sat up grinning. She was an early cot hurdler too.

What they did say though was it is rubbish to say that babies can't keep themselves awake (as preached by a popular baby guru at the time), that my Mum was quite possibly right when she said she just didn't want to miss anything and that often in follow up studies they found that babies like her proved to be bright. She continued to be a hyperactive nightmare right up until being given a pen and a reading book in Reception and since then has been a geek and is now at university studying Science, and when home often sleeps until all hours (admittedly rarely going to sleep before 3am) .

I was actually quite phobic about another baby but even though I did nothing different DD2 was so much more contented with life, developed a sleep pattern we could live happily with very quickly and only didn't sleep through the night because I wasn't ready to relinquish that last intimate night feed (I breastfed) until she was 18 months....

Trouble is that they are all different and don't come with a manual.

Thanks to the poster on p1 who added the link to the high needs baby explanation. A lot of it rings true for me - mine was easily 18 months before sleeping through. Easily.

Just lying down after feeding my 8 month old her bottle :-). How much milk does she have in her bottle? Because we are still giving 5 bottles a day here.she has slept through a couple of times, I mean 11-6 not 7-7! So a general routine is

7.30 milk
9.30 breakfast
11 milk
12.30 lunch
3 milk
4.30 tea
7 last bottle then bed.

She will then either wake at 11.30 ish in which case she will sleep through till 5/6 have another bottle and go to sleep, or like now, wake at 2/3 have a bottle and go through till 7. On my Facebook group of antenatal ladies who I met on here, I would say out of the 42 babies, only about 10 are sleeping through, so it's pretty normal. :-)

Well folks, after chatting with you all a couple of nights ago some progress has been made. She woke up about an hour after she was put to bed. Tried a bottle which she wasnt interested in and then implement the controlled crying technique someone mentioned. Within 15 minutes she was sleeping.And she slept all the way through to 8.30 in the morning. We did it again last night. And she slept through to 6am. I have just put her to bed and am an tentatively anticipating that a corner has been turned.Thanks for everybodys help and advice.

Fantastic. Is the cc the only thing you have done differently?

DD is one today. She has never slept through. Her brother slept like a log from 6 months.

Yes Bling, the cc is the only thing we have done differently.I couldnt believe it. Like i said i had tried to feed her before awhile ago and she was just babbling away laughing at me the whole time. Then we would bring her into our bed and she would be fine but eventually would start crying.Then we tried rocking with her-again just would scream.then we tried keeping her in the cot and just rubbing her back which got more difficult when she was able to sit up!much happier baby the last couple of mornings and she slept through again last night.

My 16mo has never slept through the night. Her two older brothers were the same - wasn't till about age 2 that they began to.

Co-sleeping is the way we do it. Lifesaver.