Help me with 6mo bed time

[MeadowHay]

I've had a few threads recently in this topic about my 6mo DD and her terrible napping (or lack thereof). I feel like there is very little we can do about that and maybe focusing on bedtime would be a better idea, especially as that has recently also gone to shit. DH and I never get to spend any time together, not even an hour in the evening, without her. I get no time to myself at all. We are both exhausted and ground down now and I think we could all benefit by some routine?

She stopped night feeds by around 8 weeks old. We took her lead mostly - she sort of fell into her own routine of sleeping roughly 7-9pm each night, we kept her downstairs with us. We then would wake her around 9pm for a bottle. She'd then be in her Bednest asleep from around 10 or 11pm and typically sleep til around 6.30am as that's when DH gets up for work. She used to wake 2/3 times a night for her dummy.

The couple of weeks her sleep seems to just be getting worse and worse though - daytime napping (or lack thereof), and bedtime too. She is crying most of each evening when she would normally be sleeping and then falling asleep exhausted at like 8 or 8.30pm (bottle before that is around 6pm). She is waking spontaneously after 30 minutes or so so we get her bottle, she then falls asleep on DH and then wakes spontaenously sometimes after like 15 mins before he's even put her in her cot, or she wakes as soon as he puts her in the cot and he needs to repeat rocking her to sleep a second or even third time. She is waking many many times every night for her dummy now too. I tried to count last night, it was around 7 or 8, I'm half asleep so not sure exactly, I will try and count again tonight. She woke at 7am this morning - DH is off for two weeks so not up at 6.30am to disturb her. She won't go to sleep without being motion anymore either, which is difficult now that she is getting bigger and heavier.

We have had her in the cotbed the last few nights and it seems to have coincided with her nighttime sleep going extra bed but she has outgrown her Bednest so we have no choice! She is in a vague routine with her feeds & solids. The formula packet says that at 6months to move from 5 bottles to 4 but increase to 9oz and today she didn't have her third bottle until around 4pm and drank a full 9oz so we thought we'd just try to her a further 9oz bottle around 7 or 8pm and put her to bed for the night...gave it aroudn 7.30 as she was crying so we thought she was hungry, she only drank about 3oz! She fell asleep and we tried to dream feed her some more of it about half an hour later but she wouldn't. Put her in the cotbed fine, then tried to dream-feed her some more around 9.30pm and she drank most of it but then woke up and DH has been trying to settle her in the cotbed ever since...

What should we do? How can I move her into a bedtime routine? She is a very clingy, cr-y baby so I don't think any kind of sleep training would work, she gets hysterical really easily. I thought at some point I'd want to get her down drowsy but awake but I'm not even going to try and tackle that yet, I can't get her to bed asleep never mind awake yet! The dummy is also a big problem but without it she won't sleep at all and it seems cruel to let her hysterically scream for a few nights to take it off her just so we can sleep better on a night when eventually surely she'll be able to sort it herself?

She was finally asleep in her cot around 10.30pm. DH had taken her into our bed with him to get her to back to sleep first. I counted that she woke around 8 times last night again for her dummy, then she was up to start the day at 7am. Every time she wakes she starts hysterically crying for a minute or two until she settles with the dummy. She wakes up hysterically crying in the morning too, when she used to wake up smiling and chatting. She also frequently wakes hysterically crying out of the blue when she's asleep - she did this multiple times last night when we were trying to settle her for bed, e.g. she'd fall asleep for 10 minutes then suddenly wake up hysterically with a cry, then fall asleep again for a few minutes, then repeat - she's been doing that on DH for the last hour and a half. The longest undisturbed block of sleep was probably about 20 minutes. She clearly wants to sleep when she does this as she's turning her head and rubbing her eyes, often her eyes stay closed the whole time. I've never seen another baby do this, is this normal? Why is she doing this?

If it was me, when she had the 3oz and was asleep I would have left her to sleep. I dream feed my baby but I let her have what she wants, if I try and force more she gets hysterical. I'm not sure trying to get her to drink more is having a positive effect as they know when they've had enough.

Pick a time you want her to go up to bed and start a bath, bottle, bed routine. With our baby we've been as consistent as we can be, and never caved (bringing back downstairs or in our bed, for example, but it's personal preference in what you are wanting to achieve) it probably won't happen over night and it may be hard but she should eventually get the idea. My baby went through a phase of dropping her dummy and wanting it put back in but thankfully that just stopped one night by itself.

This is only our experience, and my baby is only 5 months but we've been doing her bedtime routine from quite young and I think constancy is really important when trying to implement a routine.

Good luck!