6 Month Old Frequent night waking and trouble napping

[Bayoubaby]

Hi everyone,

My DD is 6 months. At around 12 weeks, her sleep changed. She would wake up frequently and naps went from lasting anywhere up to a few hours to being clockwork 30mins. Fast forward to now and things are no better. In some respects worse.

I have to physically battle to get her to nap. I watch the clock for time elapsing since last sleep and I look for sleep cues. She then goes into her bouncy chair with her dummy. She will cry and whine and push the dummy away. This can go on for 45 mins/an hour until she will eventually go off. Then she's asleep for 20 mins. I have tried bouncing her continuously and also trying to catch her before she wakes but none of it keeps her asleep any longer. This goes on through the day, getting progressively harder.
She has a good nighttime routine and goes down well at around 7 each night. But then the night wakings begin. On a bad night then can be hourly, on a good night we have stretches of around 2.5/3 hours.
I literally don't know what to do. She's going to outgrow the bouncy chair soon so won't even be able to use thatfor daytime naps. She won't go to sleep on her own at all through the day. Please offer me any words of advice you might have.
Is there anything I can do or I am not doing? Is this something that will change on its own? Please help!

My ds didn’t really nap at that age. I realised several months later that I was waiting until he was over tired to get him to nap. I expected a long nap once a day after lunch but for him he does better with one at 11 and one in the afternoon.

I started playing in his room with him and then put him in his cot whilst I put a bit of washing away. After a few weeks I left him his cot with a few books and he started to just fall asleep.

At night are you feeding to sleep? I cut the number of times I fed him down. Ds didn’t need to eat ever couple of hours at night so I tried to settled him without feed. I bottle feed so I did start to offer water instead. Then just spaced out feeds more and more.

There are frequent hiccups in the road and sometimes I did just go with whatever is going to get ds to sleep so I can go back to bed before I fall asleep standing up.

What's baby's usual awake time between her 30 minute daytime naps?

What's baby's milk feeding like? Much of what you describe could describe a baby living on too few calories day-to-day.

How do you get her to sleep at bedtime and in the night?

Thank you for the replies! Fate I usually start trying to wind her down after around an hour and a half of awake time. This morning now she's been awake since 8 and it's now almost 11 and she still won't go to sleep and we've been in the bouncy chair with the dummy for a while. She's yawning and rubbing her eyes so I know she's tired. At night, we have a bath at around 6:15 and then bottle in the room where she goes to bed and she's then put down drowsy in her snuzpod and goes off usually fine. It's just then it doesn't last. It could well be the feeding is an issue as in not enough day calories. During the night, she takes bottles a lot of easier than she does through the day. We've started to wean so she usually has fruit and porridge in the morning, then mid morning a milk feed but will usually only take three oz or so, then puréed vegetables for lunch and some more fruit then mid afternoon another milk feed, again maybe 3 to 4 oz, then she has another vegetable purée for tea with some fruit or yoghurt then she usually has around 6oz before bed.