Waking every hour

[graysor]

Why why why is my 7 mo dd waking every hour all evening and all night till she is up for the day at 5?

This has been going on for weeks, and while she's never been a great sleeper this is a new low.

She now settles really well at bedtime, goes to sleep in her cot usually just with a bit of shushing or patting ( a vast improvement on the feeding / rocking to sleep) but this hasn't helped with the night wakings at all.

Help!

No one with any advice?
Another dreadful night here. Up every hour ( except for one 2 hour stretch from midnight ). She isn't hungry, and won't feed to sleep anymore anyway. She's just awake and desperate to get back to sleep.

I don't know what to do to help her.

Is she in pain/discomfort.
Otherwise would you consider cc or maybe a dummy ?

I don't think she's in pain. Some days I think her teeth ( or lack of ) are bothering her, so I dose her up on calpol and / or nurofen. But it doesn't make any difference to her waking. She doesn't seem to be in other discomfort during the day.

I'm not sure I'm happy to try cc. She starts to cry if I am out sight ( even for just a second) during the day so I think she will just get too distressed.

It could be teeth?

Oh sorry, you just had said it wasn't.

In my experience I'd there is no distress and they're not hungry then it's probably a sleep regression and you just have to ride it out. It's horrendous and you have my sympathy.

What happens when she wakes up?

Does she sleep in her own room or in your room?

When you hear her wake up, give her a couple of minutes to try and resettle (start with 3 minutes. Time it on your phone). Try and increase the number of minutes you leave her for.

Waking every hour isn't that uncommon, babies sleep cycles are 45-60 mins so it sounds like she's not able to link her sleep cycles and stay asleep. She needs to learn to self settle between cycles and I found this the easiest way of doing that without too much crying.

Elspeth - how long till we come out the other side of a regression. This has been going on for at least a month.

RNB - she starts with a grumbly cry, which escalates to a proper cry ( eyes open, tears) in less than a minute.

She starts the night in her cot in her room, usually going down awake quite easily. The first 2 or 3 wakes dh can often resettle quite easily in her cot, or with a quick cuddle. But after that she gets harder and harder to settle. I usually feed her around midnight if she won't settle for dh. After this I try to put her back in her cot, but inevitably she won't settle and I bring her into bed with me. Not that this makes any difference. She carries on waking just as often and is just as hard to settle in bed as in her room.

Is she BF or FF? And did the start coincide with weaning?

I only ask because the exact same happened to my DD at about 6 months, and it turned out to be due to a dairy allergy.

She is ebf. I'm not sure if it started the same time as weaning. She's hardly had any dairy food though, just a tiny bit of yoghurt and cream cheese now and then , and I'm a total cheese fiend ( and have been the whole time while bf) , so don't think it would be that.

Chances are it probably isn't, but I just wanted to put it out there. I was a cheese fiend in pregnancy too, and while BF but the reaction only kicked in on weaning (tiny amount of dairy in baby rice, and her first taste of grated cheese was enough to set it off).

Hopefully you get to the bottom of it soon!

Thanks for the suggestion viola. I'll consider anything! That's interesting that your dd only had a reaction while weaning, and never had symptoms just from breast milk.

You've described my 7 month old to a tee! I've no idea what's wrong with her but she's screaming all night long, however she's obviously desperate to be asleep. So no answers I'm afraid but maybe it's some small comfort to know you're not alone?!

Sorry to hear you're suffering too jack. But good to know its not just us. I've no idea what's going on, so I'm just desperately hoping it's a phase that will end soon!