Would CC work in this scenario and if not, what will??

[Bunnymummy82]

I have been avoiding CC until now despite everyone giving me "advice" to try it but DD is just 6 months and her sleeping has become ridiculous. She no longer has night feeds (apart from dream feed at 10.30pm) and goes to sleep fine from 7pm but after 2am is waking every hour and sometimes more! She can always be resettled within 5 mins with a hand on her and some shushing but last night she woke 5 times!! It's been going on for weeks and I'm knackered!

Would CC work if we just did it in the night? Everyone seems to talk about it in terms of the initial going to sleep but she's fine for that - sleepy after feed, just needs a bit of shushing in her cot to go off. Does she need to be more awake at bedtime so we do CC then so she "learns" falling asleep on her own?

Any thoughts appreciated as we can't go on like this much longer!

I think teaching her to self settle fully (rather than with stroking and shhing) might well work. You could do this by CC or by gradual retreat.

In your position I would probably do gradual retreat. So gradually try to do less and less stroking and shhing at bedtime. So for example on day one do your usual; on day two you would just stroke and not shh; on day three you could stroke but stop stroking before she is asleep, but stay by cot; on day four you would stroke for a bit, then stop stroking then leave the room. There would probably be a bit of crying (which is where you would apply CC) but less than if you went straight from what you do now to nothing. Or if you did it even slower there might be no crying or not much at all.

I don't think she needs to be less sleepy at bedtime (unless you're putting her down virtually comatose already). Sounds like she is more dependent on the shh and stroking than on the feed, given you can get her back to sleep in the night without feeding.

One thing I would mention - 6 months is growth spurt time - is it possible she is actually hungry (even if she didn't need night feeds a few weeks ago, she might now need one again?) I doubt this is the main issue but be careful.