How to go about changing my 6 month-old's night time behaviour?

[lulupop]

OK, DD has now reached a level of night time wakefulness that we can no longer bear, and it's time to take the bull by the horns.

She has never ever slept through of her own accord. At the mo she goes to bed fine at 7pm and sleeps then till some time around 11pm-1am when she wakes and has a 7oz bottle. I know she shouldn't need this at this stage, but she always drains it so we've kept giving it as she must be hungry.

After that she sleeps maybe an hour before waking again and is then completely awake, and wants to play. Last night she woke at 3.30am and screamed till 5.30am (I went in every 15 mins, but nothing calmed her), then slept and woke for the day at 6.30am.

She has 2 naps during the day around 45 mins each. She is on 3x solids and 3x7oz bottles during the day.

I think we have to cut the night bottle out, but should I just totally withdraw it, or slowly reduce the amount? She goes mad if i try and give her water instead of the bottle.

Someone tell me this will get better!

Hi lulupop, I have a 6.5 month old and we are going through exactly the same thing. This morning we were up "playing" at 4:30 am. It has only been happening for a couple of weeks now so I haven't had time to think of a plan. He sounds like he sleeps & eats about the same as your daughter. Feeding in the night is just the path of least resistance isn't it but it is so difficult to be strong in the small hours when you're feeling at your weakest. Sorry I've not been much help but I think it helps to know you are not on your own. I will keep an eye on your message board to see if anyone has any solutions.

dd 7months has a dream feed at 10ish and she acts really hungry. She hasn't got up to play in the middle of the night apart from when she had a bit of jetlag but we just put her in our bed, kept everything dark, lay sort of on my side and just half lay on her with my arm to hold her still iykwim. She had a little cry and a tantrum but I just stayed dead still and it didn't take long until she was asleep. 2 nights of this and she slept through.
Sorry if this isn't too much help but it worked for us.

Well, we've done CC for 4 nights now, and it is a BIT better. I've taken her dummy away and stopped giving the 7oz midnight bottle, replacing it with water. She has a few sucks of that and then gives up. When I have to go in to her, I pick her up for a few moments and she imnediately goes all floppy over my shoulder, but when I put her down she cries again.
She has been waking once or twice between 7pm-4.30am, and settling herself back, which is an improvement.

BUT, similar to PeckerPoleover's thread, she seems to be a very early riser! Once she wakes at 5am (sometimes even earlier!), I breastfeed her and then she just will not go back to sleep. I've tried holding her close to me in bed like Chuffed said, but that doesn't work - she just wriggles and kicks me. This morning we were both up at 5am, and after an hour of trying to get her back to sleep I gave up and we got up. SHe was perfectly happy until 8.15, when I put her down for her nap.

What can I do about this? If I leave her to cry at this time in the morning, she'll cry till gone 6am, then fall back asleep and not want to get up till 8am or later. Then all her nap times in the day will be messed up (I'm not remotely GF, but have to get her to nap at certain times in order for me to be able to take DS to and from nursery school). Help!

lulu ive posted on the other thread

Kbaby, I would try just cutting the night feed altogether. I've done this with DD (offering water instead), and the first night she drank a lot of water and went back to sleep, the next nights she just had a suck, rejected it, and I put her back down and she went off after a while.

The thing to remember (and I only know this because every time we did CC with DS we ended up with some new bad habit) is not to reinforce baby#s expectations. By turning on lullaby light etc, she'll end up needing that to settle herself and the end result is you're STILL up and down all night.

So far with DD (6 nights in), she's much better and although she wakes and cries, she's going off on her own without milk. And she eats a really good breakfast now.