Bed time and night wakings

[Ouchmyundercarriage]

So my 6 mo baby goes to sleep at 10pm at night. She will not go to sleep earlier than this. We have tried putting her down earlier after the bedtime routine but she just uses it as a nap then wakes again for another 2 hours before settling for her proper sleep. She will then wake at random intervals through the night. Very occasionally sleeps for 6-7 hours so I know she can do it, but other times it’s 2-3, or 4-5. No pattern. I always try to resettle without feeding, using dummy/white noise. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. There is no discernible pattern to this either. If she is fully awake and screaming I feed her as she won’t settle with anything else and there seems no other option except CIO. She does usually then feed for a while so seems hungry but that doesn’t explain why sometimes she can go much longer. I try to feed as much as I can in the evening to tank her up but again it doesn’t seem to correlate. She’s EBF.

We generally try to stick to an EASY routine in the day. She naps quite easily in the day, can self settle, albeit for random lengths of time.

I don’t mind so much about the late bedtime but how can I get her to sleep for consistently longer periods at night? Even if it was consistently 5 hours for her first sleep that would be great. Maybe she’s not really hungry? Should I do CIO?

I always try to resettle without feeding, using dummy/white noise

What kind if proportion of night wakes can you resettle back to sleep without feeding? It could be that you need to be more persistent. I would also add in dummy, white noise and something (hand on chest, patting, shushing) that you do as an extra when more help is needed than just dummy.

The white louse should be on all the time, not switched on just to get back to sleep.

At 6 months old (and assuming you have a reliable way you get baby back to sleep without feeding) then I would not be feeding at all most nights. I would occasionally have nights when I might do a single night feed, if really not settling. Or if offer a dream feed if I know baby hang slept/eaten well in the day. Very rarely (like when teething or ill) I might consider a dream feed and a night feed, but that would be the absolute max feeds per night.

Thus would be very different if you don't have a reliable settling methods that's not feeding. If usually you do end up feeding to get baby back to sleep in the night, then baby is feeding more for comfort then calories. It's then not as simple as just not feeding, because I do get believe in ever denying baby comfort.

The poor baby is 6 months old just feed them for goodness sake ! how do you know they are not hungry ??!!

Thanks for your help. I would say on a normal night she’s waking after 3 hrs and about 1/3 time I can resettle without feeding. I do stroke head/hands too. She’s very persistent with crying and thrashing if I can’t settle her so I have been assuming hunger and trying to feed before she gets too wound up but perhaps I can be more persistent with the comforting and not feeding if she does an early wake. If I do this will she eventually learn not to wake up so quickly?

She is feeding back to sleep for the rest of the night wakings. I will also have a look at other white noise machines as the only ones we have go off after 20 mins.