7 month old sleep is just awful

[furryelephant]

Hello turning back here as my DDs sleep is just getting worse

She is 7 months, EBF and doing BLW so eating variable amounts of solids.

Never been a good sleeper but recently seems to be getting worse --or I'm not coping with it anymore.

She's up for the day around 8. Will nap after 1,5-2 hours, but this nap will only ever be 30 minutes max (on my bed) and won't go back to sleep.

Most days she'll have a further 2 naps, and for both will almost always wake after 30 minutes. If I pick her up and let her sleep on me, she'll continue napping for up to 2 hours.

I start bed time at 8 and is usually asleep by 9 (isn't fed to sleep). No matter what she wont go to sleep earlier, whether she's been up 2 hours or 4 hours!

However it then takes about 4 tries of getting her down for her to stay in her cot long enough to even brush my teeth.

All night long she then wakes up crying every 1.5-2 hours all night and we end up cosleeping from 11pm ish.

Any time from 5-6am this crying can happen every 15 minutes until she's up for the day.

I honestly have no idea what to even do with her
Should I stop letting her finish her naps on me and hope she then can increase her nap times gradually by herself but have her really over tired in the meantime?
And where do I even start overnight?

Sorry for the really long post

Oh I forgot to add that she is held/rocked slightly to sleep for every sleep, has a dummy and feeds back to sleep in the night despite not feeding to sleep at any other time.

I would go from fully awake to fully asleep in the cot. Not rocking/holding to drowsy and then putting into cot - but starting in there.

Google a mumsnet thread called 'what worked for us' for a really detailed explanation on how to do this gently.

If you are more aligned to cuddling to sleep, rocking to sleep, holding for naps, feeding to sleep - then accepting full time cosleeping will be your answer. Instead of fighing against it just forget the cot (or sidecar it to your bed long term) and just make co sleeping a safe, comfortable and a long term solution for you all.

Hi FATE I'll definitely search for that, thankyou!
The nape I'd really like to be not on me as it's impossible to do anything otherwise

Cosleeping im fine with, it's just me so we basically have half my bed each but it's just the waking up so frequently despite cosleeping that I don't know how to sort out. I just feel like it can't be healthy for her (or me) to be waking up that often every night

I just feel like it can't be healthy for her (or me) to be waking up that often every night

I agree. It doesn't sound like cosleeping and feeding to sleep is working for you both. Maybe it's time for a change?

How would you feel about night weaning and insisting on night time cot sleeps? It will be hard work and involve some battles. Not leaving to cry, but crying nonetheless.

Otherwise, just continue cosleeping and find ways of coping through this phase - because it won't last forever.

Yes I do think I'll have to night wean I kept thinking she was too young but then I realised she isn't tiny anymore do you know if it's best to still feed say 4 hourly and then gradually stop them completely or just offer water from the get go? After 1.5 hours with 4 wake ups in, she finally slept in her cot for 4 hours last night! She'd actually eaten a lot of her dinner so I think maybe she does need more solids.

Thankyou so much for recommending searching for that thread, id not come across it before but there's some excellent advice on there too!

I wouldn't be keen on stopping all feeds in the night at this age, especially since weaning is slow going.

I night weaned from the breast by about 5 months old. However in doing that, i introduced bottles and formula. And while I didn't feed most nights from then onwards, I would still have periods of time during regressions when I would bring back a night feed for a week or two. So we might have a month of no night feeds then a week of a night feed, or whatever, right through until 12 months old.

It's much easier to come and go with bottle feeds in the night. Whereas I don't know if breastfeeding supply would cope with that level of inconsistency in night feeds.

You could night wean off the beast, into bottles, if you wanted? It would completely great the dependant on your breast to go to sleep.

That makes sense. We've tried a bottle a couple of times a week but she's refused every single one since about 2 months old it's only me around so no one else to try giving her one to see if she'll take it from them either.
If she took a bottle I think she'd be completely on formula to see if it did help her sleep, I know it's not always guaranteed though. We've just recently found a cup that she'll drink water from so I may actually try some formula in there and she what she thinks! She still breastfeeds every 1-2 hours during the day too so I'd assume cutting down night feeds without replacing them with formula would make the day time more frequent too

If only they came with a handbook thankyou so much for your advice!