Help with 6mo DD

[OpheliaMoo]

Hi all

DD is almost 6 months and we're having a number of problems with sleep - to be honest we're getting a little desperate.

DD has two or three naps during the day (dependant on when she first wakes up) but we aim for a 7pm bedtime. She generally feeds to sleep which the HV says we should look to stop but at the minute she just doesn't settle and I feel like I'm on my knees with tiredness as it is.

Yesterday for example, bed at around 7pm but woke up an hour later - it's as if she thought this was just another nap (despite being in a different environment) and was awake until 11ish when I was able to feed her to sleep. I nodded off though so she fell asleep beside me which we never do. 6 hours later and she woke up for her first feed!!

Every other day though she's waking between every 2-3 hours. We put her down and almost an hour later she wakes up and will not go back to sleep. This is despite being clearly tired. Varying her bedtime seems to make little difference.

She always wakes when we're about to eat coincidental I'm sure which means either leaving her to cry (which we don't want to do) or bring her downstairs into the moses basket with little interaction until we've at least finished dinner. It's just getting all disruptive, for us too. We have no time in the evening to ourselves and I have no time to myself at all.

We just don't know how to get her to stay asleep, or get her back to sleep quickly. She is currently in a bedside crib but next week our plan is to move her into her own room and cot.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what we can do? Is this normal? Why isn's she sleepiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnngggggggg.

Thanks in advance

I sympathise! My (now 7yr old) DS was a bad sleeper, and 6 months was definitely the lowest point. I remember going to the health visitor almost in tears! It did improve from that point on (and I suspect would have even if we'd done nothing) but the main thing I did was gradually wean off feeding to sleep (I used "the no cry sleep solution" book) by taking him off just before he went to sleep and then earlier and earlier. Also co-slept quite a bit (although think he was a little older then) so we could get more sleep. Hope it improves for you soon.

Oh, and as for whether it's normal, I've had other people say 6 months was bad too

It's just so difficult - I'm 'scared' to stop feeding her to sleep in case she doesn't go to sleep as she has proven a number of times but at the same time know she needs to self settle. I just need some sleep without all this pissing about.

I'll have a look for that book, thanks!

6 months was a fairly awful stage for us as well, with similar issues about waking up 45 mins/an hour after bedtime and multiple times a night. (To give you some hope, DD is 9 months and very suddenly started sleeping through for 12 hours a night at 8 months, prior to that she was frequently up 4 times a night with a 2 hour long + party in the middle of the night).

To stop the wake ups, we reinstated a later nap around 4-5pm, and put her down at about 8.30 for bed. I had been trying to pull bedtime forward to about 7pm for a while but she often woke up an hour later which was a pain as she was then awake until 10-11 anyway. The late cat nap and later bedtime worked for us and she then slowly pulled her bedtime forward herself. It stopped the odd wake ups for some reason, and she would then sleep roughly 8-1 which was easier to deal with.

But, to be honest the massive change in her sleep came about when we moved her into her own room at 8 months and I stopped feeding at night, DH did night feeds with a bottle until she stopped them most nights.

The lack of sleep is horrendous, I do feel for you. Can you try a later bedtime and let her have a late nap to see if that works?

Will definitely try the later nap/later bed time.

2 hours since last feed/wake up and we're having hysterical crying now. I feel so resentful. I didn't want to rush her into her own room but I'm getting so fed up with this and even DH getting on my nerves

It is awful when it is so relentless isn't it? Hope you get a better night tonight.

With the feeding to sleep thing, the idea is you do it really gradually - ie if they are upset when you take them off then let them have a bit more and do it again and again until they accept coming off before they are fully asleep. Then when you've got them to that point, take them off when they are a little more awake, and repeat. It is slow, but it suited us as no crying or upset!

I also agree that when they are this small, sleep gives you more sleep, so varying naps etc may work (could never get DS to nap properly so that wasn't an option for us). Anything to get out of the cycle of not enough sleep -> over tired so doesn't sleep well.

Well she had a nap and woke up at 6pm. Two hours later I put her to bed and she woke up 45 mins right as I was having dinner and on my own. Tried settling her but she wasn't having it. Popped her in the Moses basket beside me for half hour so I could finish dinner and then took her back up.

Fed her, fell asleep.....for over 6 hours! She's just woken now for a feed. Phew.

So will try the same again tonight with the later bedtime and DH is home so we'll take it in turns and hopefully she doesn't need to get back out of bed.

Thanks for the info on feeding to sleep, I'll give that a go from next week I think - see how the going to bed goes first.

Fingers crossed!

DS2 did a really similar pattern at around 6m - always waking an hour or so after bedtime, spending the evening up and down trying to settle him, and then he'd eventually sleep and do a longer stretch. Evenings were miserable for a while, so I feel your frustration. I can't remember what broke the pattern really tbh, but after a month or so it changed and he started doing longer stretches. It was like he'd just got into a habit of the evening wakings. He was already in his own room though, so that may not make much difference. He's now usually on 0 or 1 night wakings and it's usually if he's lost his dummy - although that goes out of the window if he is ill....or teething...or windy... (He went down at 7 tonight and didn't wake until 5.15)

He's also bf, but never fed to sleep - nothing I initiated, he's just always wanted to be left alone to go to sleep. Does she have a dummy? It might help her to self settle. You could try popping one in when you think she's done feeding for 'food' and has moved on to comfort sucking. If not, what about a comfort object - DS has a biggish soft jellycat rabbit and he holds it and plays with its ears to fall asleep. Maybe try putting something tucked in her arms while she's feeding, so that when you put her down she's still holding something familiar. If it smelled like you that might also help.

Also, it might be worth looking at the No Cry Sleep Solution - it has lots of gentle ideas to help babies settle, although it's not an overnight fix. Sorry for the mammoth post, but my first was a truly rubbish sleeper, (waking every hour between 5-8 months) so I sympathise! Oh one more thing and I'm sure you're already doing this but try as hard as you can to settle her without bringing her downstairs or putting lights on etc, otherwise she may well get in a pattern of treating that first stretch of sleep like just another nap. I appreciate it can be pretty much impossible though, especially if you're on your own, and spending your evening trying to get a baby to sleep in a dark room is fairly soul destroying!