Should I be more proactive about her sleeping through?

[weeblueberry]

DD2 is 7 months and generally goes down at 7.30 then wakes at 10.30 and 4ish. Then she sleeps til wake up time at about seven. It's not ideal but it's not exactly wrecking me either. My first daughter was a serious sleeper and slept right from 7-7 from about three weeks so I'm not sure what's really normal at this age? I'm back at work next week and would obviously prefer she was at least dropping one of those wakes but given that she tends to not entirely 'wake' but instead gets distressed in her sleep and cry until she's soothed either via bottle or boob it's tricky to teach her to self soothe because she's not fully waking iykwim?

Do you use dummies?
Around this age ds started to be able to find a dummy in his cot which he'd then put in and go back to sleep so didn't need to wake me up!

Sadly not. She's absolutely refused one and now when we've tried she just plays around with it and it does more damage than good.

To be honest the answer depends on your parenting philosophy. I'm sure others will disagree, but I don't believe you can teach a baby to self- soothe.

I'm back at work now full-time and I do feel your pain as my 15 month old still wakes at least once a night. I have a senior job which is quite demanding and sometimes I do wonder how long I'll be able to hack it on broken sleep. He will get there in his own time though, he's gone down from a lot of wakes to just one or two without any type of sleep training and that's how I prefer things to be. I don't believe in sleep training personally, but no doubt you will get a huge range of responses and there is no right way, just opinions.

It is very normal to be waking at 7 months (your other child sounds like a dream, you were very lucky!!!) - it's very normal well past age 1, although by then it starts to get very painful....

So basically, it is up to you. They say you should never attempt to sleep train before 6 months, but she is past that now, so it's up to you!

I really don't want to sleep train. Not least because she's going to have to be in our room for a good few months yet. I've posted before about how I hope it's learning to crawl that's prompting it (her head is hitting the top of the cot) and that once she's past that she'll get better but I'm panicking a little now that the learning to crawl could take a loooong time...

My 20 month old still wakes at least once a night, usually for a comfort feed. Sometimes I can be up with him for an hour and it's draining because I hate going to work on broken sleep.

When he was 7 months old he was waking 3-4 times a night and we had so many issues around his sleep that I thought I was going to crack up. I sleep trained at 9 months old because I was due to return to work and there was no way I would be able to cope on so little sleep.

After sleep training we had three blissful months of him sleeping 7-7 but then it all went to put when we went abroad on holiday and his sleep pattern went all over the shop and has never really improved.

I would say that maybe 1 or 2 nights a week he will sleep through but on the other nights he has a minimum of one wake up, sometimes two