Another desperate mum with a night waking 7mo... What am I doing wrong? Please help if you can!!

[emeraldgirl1]

We are desperate and just really looking for advice.

She goes to sleep v easily at 7.15ish, out like a light until 11 or 11.30... And then the chaos sets in.

She half wakes up, I usually feed her (she is ff) but more often than not I give her a dummy and see how much longer she will go. This can buy another couple of hours if am lucky. So she has a feed around 1am, guzzles 7oz bottle entirely. Back to sleep fine... Then wakings again at around 3, then 4, then 4.30... I usually pop her into bed with me around 5 as she is often wiiiiiiiiiide awake then, on a bad day it will be 6.30am before she is back to sleep, a good day means she goes back to sleep fast but then is awake again at 6.15.

I have started trying a second night feed at around 4am if I fed her before midnight, in case the problem is hunger. I hate doing this as feel it is a regression but thought it might help. It doesn't, really. She has about half a feed. It does get her back to sleep faster than if I were just to try to soothe her bck to sleep though.

I am so tired and demoralised I can't cope with leaning over her cot for ages in the middle of the night, trying to soothe her back to sleep. Hence the second feed.

Either way she still doesn't sleep more than an hour a stretch between 3am and 6. Second feed helps a bit but not much.

So... What am I doing wrong?!

She is on solids, has been since 4m, we are gradually introducing more protein etc but her appetite is still small and she has no teeth so I think she does get quite hungry.

I am offering milk more often in the day. She doesn't have as much as I think she should, I am aware that she needs more in the day and less at night, but how do I do this?! Is she too young to try gradual cutting down amounts at night? Might this encourage her to have more in the day?

Her naps are ok ish... Morning nap is a fight to get it beyond thirty mins even though she wakes up exhausted still at that point! But I am trying hard to leap in and soothe her back to sleep as she needs another half hour ish. But timing of the nap is ok I think, starting at 9 or 9.15. Long lunchtime nap of 1.5 hours at about 12pm then a catnap of 30 mins at about 4.15. As I say, she is fine about going to sleep at night, in fact she is exhausted by 7pm as her nights are so bad!!

Could it be teething? Sometimes she is barely waking up but just shuffling and whimpering in half sleep mode, this wakes me up though and then I can't get back to sleep! Does that sound like teething?

Even when she does wake (not for feeds) she is back to sleep quickly if I give dummy, except for beyond 3am when it is hard to get her back to sleep.

Early waking habit is miserable too.

We have yet to move her into her own room, might this help? DH is loud snorer so maybe he disturbs her? But the waking is as bad when he is in spare room upstairs. Maybe I am disturbing her? Is moving her the first thing to try?

I am rambling, sorry, but am at end of my tether, I cry in the night when she wakes again and can hardly face the days when they start so early... Haven't managed a block of more than four hours sleep since before she was born. Mostly it's two hours at a time if am lucky.

Oh, just to add, I will try anything except CIO, I know that may sound insane to everyone who swears by it but it is just not my thing and would stress me out even more if that were possible!M

Pamplemousse is right I think. Changing nappy, patting etc is most likely keeping her awake. Op I genuinely feel your pain as my DS had reflux and was a dire sleeper. We started solids at 4m also but by 6m the sleep was still dreadful. Basically it was a habit. For us we had to really believe 1. He needed to sleep as much as we did and 2. He had the ability to sleep through the night. We just needed to have more faith in him! Turn off the monitor so you only hear actual crying, believe in your baby, and stick to your daytime routine. Our DS now sleeps 7-7 and is a much happier baby as he is not so tired all the time!

Thank you everyone!

Faddy peony, thank you - I am so heartened to hear that I am doing some things right!!! She is down for her morning nap no later than 2 hours after waking, this seems the optimum time for her to go to sleep easily, I have started doing a kind of wake-to-sleep thing with the morning nap as I was finding that she woke after exactly 30 mins and then was rubbing her eyes and yawning again five mins later and then was a zombie for the rest of the morning, crying with tiredness etc. So now when she wakes in the morning nap I spend 10 mins soothing her back to sleep and she has another 25 mins or 30 mins and wakes much more refreshed. But this never takes us to beyond 10.30am latest, more like 10.15, so I don't think she is sleeping too late/too long...?

All in all this has really helped - hearing that it is more normal than I have been thinking - most people I know have babies who will do an 11pm dreamfeed and then go til around 6 or even 7am so my broken nights stumbling around really sound awful in comparison. Plus I am just SO TIRED!!!! DH can't do any feeds as his work hours are just ridiculous, even when he does a w/e feed I need to wake as she can't/won't go back to sleep with just him...

I guess This Too Shall Pass... and we will see if moving her into her own room helps at all as I have been wondering about that - even if we are not disturbing her our room is on the front and is v noisy whereas her own room is much quieter as a back bedroom... might help!!!

I moved my twins at 7.5 months and they are not sleeping any better...

So Granny what you are actually saying is that you did have to let them cry between feeds? One mum's whinging is another's crying, so it's perhaps a matter of degree.

I don't mean to offend you, but coming onto a thread and saying babies 'should' be sleeping through at seven months is quite inflammatory and in my experience wrong. It's very stressful for the majority of women who don't have babies who'll sleep through to be told that. As I said, you've either been lucky or very thick skinned about night waking. It sounds like it's the latter, then?

Hi, I don't usually post on sleep matters, but your situation is so similar to what mine has been that I wanted to mention what seems to have helped us. My DS2 has never slept well and at 8 months routinely woke every 3 hours. He self settled at bedtime which is what confused me as with DS1 once he'd worked out how to go to sleep at bedtime he stopped waking in the night, so I figured the first bedtime bit was the important bit. DS2 was different though - he self settled well at bedtime so I couldn't work out why he still woke so often ( I know some babies do, but DS2 was on 3 big meals a day by then so I'm pretty sure he wasn't hungry). The thing that helped us was really separating the bedtime milk feed from bedtime - I think DS2 was so sleepy by bedtime that he gave all the appearance of self settling but perhaps wasn't quite as good at it as I thought. Have you tried feeding her before the bath maybe and seeing if that helps?

Hope that's useful. Sleep deprivation is hell, but there really is light at the end of the tunnel - DS2 is just 1 now and just beginning to sleep better.

You'd make a good politician Granny

That's about the most evasive answer I've seen on this thread. But thanks anyway.

I always feed mine when they whinge though, maybe I am getting it all wrong. It just feels like, you know, trying my best for them. I don't know what is wrong but if they are hungry then I'm not going to withold food.

Emerald I would try ditching the dummy and night weaning. The aim should be for her to go into her own bed awake at night without any crutches that can't be there for her immediately when she wakes up, namely you, a dummy and milk.

Teddybears, night lights are all fine. There are many ways of doing this, depending on which variation on sleep training you want to go for (CIO, CC or No Cry).

Generally speaking, I found that 6-7 months was a particularly low time for my ds and his sleep. He was learning a lot of new skills and getting a few teeth which is a recipe for disaster.

FWIW, my DS is one of 6 cousins under 6. He has mostly sttn since he was 8 months but teething, illness and development all bother his sleep. 2 cousins are good sleepers and the other 3 are bad. It is a luck of the draw.

New parents can't help but to brag if they have good sleepers so I try to ignore them. People will also lie. This makes you feel even worse when you're knackered but your LO is normal, I promise. Sleep is not a reflection on your parenting. You can do everything right but they haven't read the books so won't always play along.

My favourite advice is to never take parenting advice of any sorts from someone who has a child more than a couple of years older than your dc. They mean well, but they can't really remember. Hence why 'sleep when the baby sleeps' is crap advice.

I hope your LO learns to sleep well soon. It is very horrible being sleep deprived but it will pass and you will come through it at the other end.

Another one to reassure you that is is normal and NOT your fault. Which doesn't mean it isn't really hard for you. But I found with my first DC it helped to feel this way even with the sleep deprivation, once I stopped beating myself up about it.

I think gentle night weaning is probably the way to go...?

I do feel your pain as this sounds a very similar pattern to my 5 month old and I am very grumpy that, having worked hard, she now self settles at bedtime but it didn't turn out to be the magic bullet everyone promises! My next step is to move her bedtime feed before her bath and see if that helps, then at 6 months I'm going to see if moving her to her own room helps. And after that if I'm still struggling I may try PUPD or possibly just hand holding through the cot.

However, if I can get her to sleep in 4 hour stretches for the first part of the night, I'm happy for her to come into bed from 4am onwards - babies always seem to start getting unsettled from them.

Sorry for rambling but hopefully you'll find a bit of shared experience comforting :)

cantthinkofagoodone - thank you. Have been thinking about dummy-weaning... but dreading it!!! Any tips?! She always has a dummy when she goes to sleep so it would be a big jolt to take it away. Am not a CC or CIO person, am aiming for as little crying as possible!!!
Also am torn on the dummy thing as her teething gets so bad when she goes to sleep in the evening and I think it helps her. Don't want her suffering any more than she already does with it (she is not taking teething well...)
But good to hear that developmental leaps can make sleep worse... it helps to have some explanations even if I can't do anything about them!

My 7mo has been a fab sleeper until now. She's waking every night from about 3 til about 430, I think its teething.

Hello! I absolutely sympathise, my 6mo was exactly the same, until 4 nights ago (I am absolutley not counting my chickens and know she may revert, but here is what we did)...I decided no more night feeds, because I was so incredibly tired it was becoming hard to look after my 5yo and 3yo. First night she woke at 11 and cried for a long time but I kept going in, comforting, holding, rocking her. When I put her down she would cry again, if give it a while then pick up again. Eventually she settled back to sleep and slept til 4am. Resettled her then she slept til morning. Last few nights she has woken at 1am, 20-30 mins of comforting then had fallen back to sleep til 7.30 which astounded me! I haven't fed her in the night for 4 nights and she is now feeding much better during the day. I feel a lot better and can only hope it lasts.

after battling with Dh over this for 9 months I'm afraid I agree with rooners.

I am bf and cosleeping and it definitely helps both of us - he probably does wake more but he goes back to sleep quicker and not always with a bf (honest!)

teeth can be a looooong horrid issue though, an nct ff friend is going through the same teeth stuff as us as in literally all coming together. he slept through for 6 months but last 6 weeks does what you describe. she and her husband DO find however that they get a better night through cosleeping with him. she did sleep with him for the first 3 months but he was bottle ebm fed but as he was doing well (12 hours a night) they moved him into own room.

cosleeping is tricky as it's like co-resting at first and you sort of both need to practice.

www.isisonline.org.uk/hcp/how_babies_sleep/normal_sleep_development/sleep_and_feeding/

(I give her calpol, let her mooch about in bed next to me for about 20 mins to give it a chance to kick in, then latch her on and she drinks herself to sleep. Seems to be working, last night we were all back asleep before 4 )

oh regarding the 'should be sleeping through' bit that's all based on a flawed 1950s study of ff 3 month olds. I'll try n find that bit...

see here and follow links to research paper explaining findings. there's also a paper about what is classified as 'sleeping through'.

www.isisonline.org.uk/how_babies_sleep/normal_sleep_development/

Not all babies sleep through from 7 months and certainly not the norm from stories mums in RL tell me.

DD1 was, and still is, an awful sleeping and has never slept through - coming up to 4 years! DD2 slept through before a year old (now almost 2), but we co-slept right from the start, and still co-sleeping. Bf whenever she woke up - she dropped her down feeds.

Every baby is different though.

Oh, clarella, that study has just saved my sanity!!!

It's just horrible when you think you're the only one, with a baby who is somehow 'flawed' :(

Those statistics have almost made me cry with relief, I feel so much better knowing it's within the range of normal.

NAR4 dont worry I know what it is like, i had one day when I had to ring DH out of work, because I seriously didn't think it was safe for me to pick DS up from school!

Google the ISIS infant sleep study webpage if you want a scientific account of how babies sleep, not based on what some random granny on the Internet says. Have you tried pain relief in case it is teething keeping her awake? I have similar issues with my 6m DD, although she's had some great nights where she has been down at 7pm, woke for a feed at around 2 and then was back off until 6. Right now she's doing something very similar to yours, so I suspect it's a combination of teething and a wee cold she has - I know she can sleep for longer, so if she's waking she must need something.

Grannylipstick - I don't see what you have to offer on this thread? Telling someone that all their problems could have been solved with a routine from birth is pointless when the child is 7 months old. There is also no way any breastfed newborn I know would have managed 4 hours between feeds. Even at 6 months I don't know many babies that can put away 8oz bottles in one sitting.

If it's any consolation, my 8 month old is in her own room and has never slept in bed with me and is also going through a really shitty sleeping patch of waking every two hours or even hourly. She has just had 3 teeth come through in a week, calpol and bonjela seemed to make fuck-all difference. But I think the main thing is that separation anxiety has kicked in - she is becoming far more demanding in the day. Screaming if I leave the room or even put her down without playing with her.
Stupid developmental phases. I'd leave her to grumble a bit more in the night but my DS has just started school and needs his sleep and she was waking him.

emerald

just posted another link on a thread I made called 'taa dahhhh! sleep interventions sorted'

Instead of co sleeping (I was too frightened about rolling over on them in a deep sleep) I moved bedside table and pushed the cot, dropside down next to bed so in the night I wouldn't physically have to get up but could sit up in bed and breastfeed I also found keeping them up to when I went to bed at midnight meant they slept till 5.30/6am. Once I had established that routine I then started to work backwards in 1/2 chunks to put them to bed. Dd slept thru the night at 9 weeks and ds at 10 weeks.
Having said that they both started to wake at around 6 months for some reason, probably teething. I did feed in the night when they woke but would only do so after a little controlled crying period in chunks of 30 second. ds we ended up putting bottles of milk in the cot and we would hear him patting around for his bottle then drinking it then throwing it out of his cot when he was finished, usually it would hit dh on the head.
Ds you could actually give a bottle to at 6 weeks and he would feed himself.

for granny .....

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24042081/

I have a ewan. it's now in the toy box.

Stuff 'in their own room', mine's on his own planet

I am co sleeping with a martian.