Everyone with younger babies is getting so much more sleep

[YellowAndPinks]

Our six month old DD has never slept through. A typical night for her still involves about 3 wake ups.

6:30pm bedtime
9.30pm dream feed (if we leave her she wakes up for milk by 10pm)
12am wakes up needing dummy replaced
3am wakes up for feed
5.20am wakes up for the day

I keep hearing how everyone I know with babies her age or younger are sleeping so much better. Does this sound particularly bad to you, should I be doing something to try and improve her sleep and if so what?

The late bedtime seemed to result in him waking up at 8.30am for the day so you might want to gradually put back her bedtime? See if that works (if the 5.20am starts are doing you in?)

No mine didn't. Sounds similar to my DS although I think he was actually worse than that at 6mo. He's only just started sleeping through consistently and later than 5am at 2 years old!

Well my almost 6 month old still wakes every 1-2 hours and only really sleeps longer than half an hour at a time if he’s in bed with me so I’d prefer your nights OP 😉

And yes, some friends of ours said theirs slept through from a few weeks old, but then clarified it with “they just used to wake up for milk and go straight back down once we’d fed them”

OP it’s so hard but it does look normal for a 6mo. At that stage we tried the hungry baby milk for night feeds which gave us a bit more space between feeds (not sure if you’re FF or BF) but all looks standard. We had a little routine where DH would do late feed, I’d do night feeds and he would do early wake up so he would sleep 10-5:30 solid ish and I would get 9-1 then another couple of hours then a solid 3:30-7:30/8 when he left for work. Could you try something like that? It made is bearable but not ideal! X

My nearly 6 month old (EBF) wakes a minimum of 3 times a night and starts the day about 5.30-6am. I'm exhausted but she is a much better sleeper than my older 2 children were at this age!

Honestly, that’s pretty much identical to DT2’s current schedule and he’s 3 in September.

He doesn’t need to feed obviously but he wakes up and needs water, settling etc, then a 5:20am wake up is a good day at the moment!

I would have killed for that at 6 months. For every younger baby who’s sleeping more there are many others sleeping less. And those younger babies will probably hit the 4 month regression soon and then they’ll feel bad for being so smug 😂

Just a warning - the later bedtime doesn’t work with all babies. My nearly 8 month old will sleep till 6.30 if put to bed before 6.30pm (with one or two wake ups to play silly buggers). However, if you put her to bed even fifteen minutes later she’s up at 5, on occasion even 4.

I have not the first clue why this happens, she must be an oddity.

I’d have killed for your babies sleep pattern OP. My boy twin hit the four month regression and was awake to feed every ninety minutes to two hours until he turned ten months!

Thanks for the responses. Last night was quite good she slept from 6.40pm, had a dream feed at 10pm and then woke at 4.30am for milk. She woke for the day at 5.50am.

I've read your replies to DH so he knows she is actually doing quite well as he keeps saying what an awful sleeper she is! I think you've given him some perspective.