Please tell me what to do with 6 month old.

[CarlyRose80]

Hi I need general help. LO 6.5 months has been a bad sleeper from the start. We've had nights up every hour, some every 2, some nights we've slept through so never consistant. At 5 months he had a cold which knocked him out if routine and stopped with the solids we had started to introduce. He had reflux so never drank more then 4oz, but this last 2 weeks he's has a throat infection and thank The Lord he's been prescribed milk for milk protein allergy as they think its that rather then reflux. He's getting back on the solids and seems to want to drink more milk so I think all this is going in the right direction but he won't bloody sleep. It's every 2 hours through the night. I fed him once and he drank it but its constant. We do all the obvious, dark room, quiet etc, is it time to sleep train? He has a dummy which often pops out. Advice really needed as I'm back to work next week and don't know how I will survive. xx

Really sorry to hear you're having such a bad time :( Ds was waking every 60-90 mins in the night when his dummy was popping out when he was about 4 months old, and we decided that he needed to learn to settle without it. So when he cried in the early evening (ie around 9pm, when he was in bed but we were still awake), we let him cry for a few mins instead of rushing in, to see what would happen. Each time I said I would leave him for 4 mins (an arbitrary number, but it didn't seem as bad as 5!), and then go in and replace dummy if he hadn't gone bac to sleep. After a couple of evenings, he somehow 'learned' to go back to sleep himself after a little 3-4 minute cry.

Sounds harsh but it worked for us. And then he started to manage to do it in the wee small hours of the night too.

Not sure what to suggest about giving him milk...my gut instinct says if he is 6 months old and getting a good amount of milk during the day, he probably doesn't need it at night? But only you will know this from you gut instincts. Do you give him a feed before you go to bed? at around 10pm? Cos we found until DS was properly weaned and having 3 meals a day, this really helped him get through the night a bit better. We did it as a dream feed. But maybe if your LO is waking up around that time, you could feed him/her then, so that when s/he wakes up after that, you know she's not hungry, if that makes sense?