6 month old waking 2-3 times a night

[timefortea79]

My DS has just turned 6 months old and wakes on average 2-3 times a night, approx. every 3 hours. He is EBF and I've only just started weaning. I'm trying to decide whether he is actually hungry or just waking out of habit.

If he wakes only 1-2 hours after I last fed him then I settle him to sleep rather than feeding, this can take around 30-45 minutes. If it is habit how do I go about stopping the night waking/feeding? Should I just cut out all feeds immediately, or cut out one at a time?

My plan is to wait until he's on three solid meals a day before I start tackling this but any thoughts appreciated.

You are the expert on your child so you will best know if cutting out all feeds or one at a time suits him best.

My DC2 was EBF at 6 months and one day around that time I noticed his first tooth. That same night he woke earlier then he normally would for his night feed. Because it was early, I just re-inserted his dummy and shushed for a bit back to sleep. As it turned out he didn't wake up again that night, it was the first night he slept through.

So from then on, me and DH swapped sides of the bed. Now he wasn't going to be fed in the night, DH did the dummy and shushing at all wakes and I just stopped all night feeds. DH was much more efficient at nighttime settling, since I was the source of great comfort in breastfeeding.

However with my DC4, while she can do the 8 hours of 11pm-7am, I don't believe she is ready to drop that 11pm feed even though she is nearly 6 months (and also formula fed). So for her I wouldn't just stop all night feeds, since that wouldn't be right for her.

And for the complete package - DC1 was over 2 years old before she slept 12 hours without milk. DC3 was one of those mythical magical babies who slept 12 hours with no feed from 6 weeks old.

My 6 month old does exactly the same - I thought he was doing brilliantly as his brother woke every 90 minutes until he was 2!

Do you use a dummy? If so I would try inserting that before feeding and if it settles him great, if it doesn't then he probably needs some milk. That's what we did with DS1 (now 6.5 mths) initially and it become apparent it was only around 4am that he wouldn't settle without milk. Then once I started weaning (about 5.5 mths) I gradually gave him less and less in that feed until one day he just refused it. A couple of days ago he started refusing his 10.30pm bottle (we would wake him for it) so that's us now not doing any night feeds. He's on 3 meals a day now though and eating quite a lot.

It's interesting to get some perspective from you all. My DD is now 4 and slept through 7pm-7am from 8 weeks old, so only having that to compare to made me think DS should be capable of a full nights sleep. I actually don't mind getting up and feeding him at the moment as it's quicker to do that than it is to settle him! However, I am back at work in 3 months and I'm hoping to have a bit more sleep by then if possible.

He does have a dummy but has started refusing it or taking it out within a few minutes so we can't always use that to settle him.

I could have wrote this 1 month ago....my DD is 8 months now and I just got soooo fed up of feeding her every 3-4 hours at night. I was recommended this blog by someone on Mumsnet so went ahead and read the entire blog of Wee Bee Dreaming sleep consultant and took loads of notes and changed things around a bit in the nap and bedtime routine so I wasn't feeding to sleep anymore...(was scared about this but actually my DD settled herself to sleep with just 5 mins of crying) and put white noise in her room (radio on static) and it has had an amazing effect over the last week....she even slept through the night one night and then the other nights has just had one feed at 1am ish ! So amazing. ! I would describe our DD as very sensitive and quite high needs baby but she didn't cry for more than 5 or 6 mins all night....We didn't need to go into ther room to pat and shh or anything...(we had decided no feeds before midnight and 10 mins of crying tops before we go in to reassure) we were amazed that whenever she woke she cried a tiny bit then settled herself (maybe the white noise helped ) Would highly recommend that blog and white noise and breaking the feed-to-sleep association. Good luck.