Waking every two hours at 6.5months old: your experiences please!

[Tmgc123]

Morning all.

My little girl has never been an amazing sleeper. Recently we managed to change her routine so that she was not being fed to sleep at nighttime, and instead had her feed pre bath, and goes into her cot awake, and plays to sleep.

Holy grail right?

Well. Since then she now wakes more often in the night. Every two hours like clockwork. Technically it should help her sleep longer and teach her to settle herself but nope.she was never amazing but could sleep for longer periods on her first sleep, and then would wake at 12,3, and 6 (there were other problems though so it’s not a total backslide)

The weaning is slow but we’re trying and she’s EBF with a dairy allergy so I won’t be filling her up with formula.

I’ve tried lots of other things in the night to get her to sleep but she will not settle until she’s had a feed.

Has anyone else been through this and how/when did it resolve?

I too have a crap sleeper. From 5 months on it felt like we hit rock bottom - regular wakings, fighting sleep, really early mornings (as in 4am). Now at 8 months old, he is so much better. I can usually get a 5 hour stint at the start of the night (I go to bed when he does - catching up on sleep is more important to me at this point than having an evening). He often has a night feed (I breastfeed) at around 1am. From 3am he can be quite restless but I am able to re-settle him with shushing / cuddles and have almost managed to wean him off his 4am feed this way. He wakes for the day between 5.30am-6.30am so an improvement there. The only thing I have changed is being conscious of his awake time in the day so even if he is not giving any tired cues, I don't let him go longer than 3 hours without a nap. That may have helped or maybe it's just developmental! Good luck and I hope it improves for you soon.

Thank you! Yes naps I’m quite strict with: she definitely can’t go longer Han 3 hours between naps. Although when her dad or my mum are with her they just say “she didn’t nap” ... yeah cause she’s going to take herself off to bed!

Did he naturally start stretching his sleep out longer?

He has yes - he was doing those infuriating 20 minute cat naps but now he tends to do an hour although I do often go in and re-settle him after 40 minutes as he tends to start naturally waking then. He sometimes goes even longer and does 1.5-2 hours but an hour is average. Of course, some days it all goes wrong and he refuses to nap properly but I'd say that we are generally improving overall!

Oh also I think there is a growth spurt at 6 months so those night feeds may well be needed at the moment...we have only just dropped to 1 feed (and sometimes still do 2 and on terrible nights even more!).

I would have no idea how to settle her! We had a day trip today, she woke up in the car bang on 30minutes, but after crying a while (I was driving on the motorway, can’t do anything) she went back to sleep.

Two hours! Crazy!

She normally does 30minutes to the second, but sometimes a bit longer. I swear the girl has an amazing internal clock.

On average (i.e. not with with Dad or gr'parents!) what are her naps like? Amount/length?

I'm strongly of the opinion that sleep breeds sleep but got too over-zealous with that with my 6month old and she was sleeping TOO much in the day (for her age) and likewise was waking every 2hrs at night. She basically just wasn't tired enough to stay asleep.

@chocdollymixture she has 3 naps anday (today four but her first one was early)

They range from 30 mins to an hour, once she’s had more than an hour but it’s rare.

Today she had an hour, 30 mins, 45 mins, and a 30 minutes, then went to bed and slept less than two hours before her first wake up.

I would like her to nap longer but nothing I do seems to make it happen. :(

I follow her cues for naps. She goes down after being awake for between 2-3 hours, sometimes less but that’s the general rule. I definitely couldn’t get her to sleep less!