Advice needed - 6 month old waking hourly

[Bob0117]

Tips please to help encourage my almost 7 month old to stop waking hourly!! I'm exhausted!!

She is generally a happy, content little girl. She is transitioning onto solids nicely & as she is generally so easy going during the day I find an allergy or something similar unlikely.

She used to wake twice a night, I could take that. Feed & back down. Easy! But the past few weeks she has taken to settling at about 7/7.30, waking at 11(ish) & from then on almost hourly! Sometimes she wakes as early as 9 & the hourly wakes start from then.
Sometimes she just wants her dummy & a soothe, other times she wants milk. Sometimes just a couple of ounces, other times a full 5/6 ounces. There is no consistency for me to try & judge what I could be changing to encourage longer sleep patterns!

She naps at about the same time every day & they are never overly long, 1.5 hours is a major achievement, generally they're about 40 minutes.

She is in with us for now as she doesn't have her own room until we move in the not so distant future so I am probably being overly responsive to her stirring so as not to disturb the whole house or neighbours.

I can accept that she is just not a great sleeper & that I have to bear that cross, but if anyone has any tips that might encourage better sleep then they would be gratefully received!!

There is a huge growth spurt at 6 months and I believe I'm currently going through this as well. As with everything it will slow down and it will pass! X

Is it the dummy? I got rid of ds's at around 6 months as he woke multiple times for it

You could look at increasing daytime milk intake to calorie load during the day.

Early weaning foods tend to be low calorie (fruit and veg) or else filling but not actually high calorie (rice, oats). It's calories baby needs and the most calorie dense foodstuff baby can have is milk. Gram for gram she would get far more calories from 100ml of milk than 100g of anything else.

So try not to replace milk feeds with solids. Instead maintain milk feeds and give solids in addition. At least until portion sizes increase and more food groups covered (in particular protein and carbs).

It is not unusual in these early weaning weeks/months to feel like going back to newborn dats when baby spends all their waking time eating. For example your day might go:

Wake > Milk Feed > short play > Meal > clean up and nappy > Another Milk Feed > Sleep..... Wake and repeat.

Which brings me to my next suggestion. Try yo keep naps as frequent as possible by reducing awake time. I wouldn't go longer than 2h awake unless the previous nap was over an hour. I'd aim more for 90m awake between naps.

If you consider a meal might take 20 minutes to give, a milk feed upon waking 15 mins and a milk feed when ready for a sleep is another 15 minutes - that is 50 of your 90 minutes awake time eating! Add in cleaning baby up and a nappy change and you could end up with as little as only half an hour actual active play time in each awake time cycle.

Thank you for coming back to me ladies, it is much appreciated!

I did consider getting rid of the dummy as it can feel like a hinderance rather than a help in the middle of the night! I didn't want to upset the apple cart un-necessarily so have held off while trying other things but maybe that's the way to go. Pixie, did it work for you?

Thank you FATE I've seen that you are abit of a sleep guru on here so I appreciate your wisdom!
I do think she has been concentrating on her solids more than her milk so I shall try & get more milk into her during the day. She still only drinks 4-6oz per bottle which doesn't seem like much at her age so I will make that my "go to" rather than her big girl snacks!
I will try & get her napping more too. She generally has 2, morning & afternoon, sometimes a 3rd at lunch time depending on what time she wakes up from her morning snooze so maybe concentrating on that will help too!

HT fingers crossed we both get a reasonable night soon!! 🙏🏼

The only bonus is that she's never grumpy with it, her cute little smiling face definitely lessens the pain I'm settling her in the middle of the night...AGAIN 😂