Help! Nearly 6 month old won't settle after early morning feed

[Jemimapuddleduk]

My ds is coming up to 6 months and has never been a great sleeper. He seems to be in a pattern of waking at 3.30am will take a bottle of 7oz and then be wide awake and merrily chat away until he gets fed up and starts screaming. He is on around 30oz of milk a day and 3 small meals. He self settles at bedtime (gos down awake with dummy and Dream sheep). He does the first stretch from 7-3.30 without a murmur! He can sleep through and has done a handful of times. At the moment he tends to end up in bed with me at 5 to try and get us both s couple of hours sleep before his big sister wakes at 7. Any ideas? Is it just a phase? Thanks

How quickly do you get that 3.30am bottle in him? If you catch him just at the murmering stage, before he's properly awake and definitely before he's started crying - then he might still be drowsy enough to not fully wake for the feed.

It may be worth trying to make the little ones feeds a bit later. So say if he has his last bottle at seven and goes to bed at half past for example, maybe aim to give the bottle at half seven instead. It takes a few days as you don't want him roaring at the Normal feed time before bed and stressing him out, so just start pushing them out a bit each night by ten mins. He ahould hopefully sleep later in the morning. I did this with my bubba and he's out for the count now at half eight and sleeps til five. Also, like the post above says he may just be stirring so keep a dummy handy as he may just want a bit of comfort. He'll let you know If that's not the case!! Best of luck xx

Thank you both. He is in his own room now so often by the time I get to him he is wide awake. We have tried the dummy instead of bottle and he did go back to sleep but woke every 45minutes or so. I may try pushing everything back a bit. He is exhausted by 6 though but maybe I try it very gradually.