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6mo waking every 2 hours through night

9 replies

Nix99 · 27/11/2021 19:20

Dd has struggled with sleeping through the night since she hit the 4 month sleep regression. She puts herself to sleep every time and her naps are good and she can link sleep cycles at nap time but just cant seem to do it at night. She wakes every 2 hours and the only thing to get her back to sleep is boob otherwise she will just scream and cry. She wont take a dummy (or bottle) so that isn't an option and we have tried white noise, shh pat etc but the only thing to work is boob. Sometimes she seems genuinely hungry but other times not. When she does have the boob she'll go back to sleep quite quickly and we make sure every time she has had it she puts herself back to sleep. Is there anything we can do to get her to sleep longer stretches through the night without offering her the boob? She has 2 teeth but I'm not sure it's due to teething as it's been going on a while now but could be. If we need to sleep train how do we do it as she is already putting herself to sleep. Thank you

OP posts:
Nix99 · 27/11/2021 19:22

I also want to stop breast feeding soon and move to formula but I'm worried this is going to be even harder with getting her to settle in the night. She has started solids.

OP posts:
Valhalla17 · 27/11/2021 19:32

To be honest OP, it's kind of normal! I recall being up every few hours with ds at that age but the phase didn't last long.

Valhalla17 · 27/11/2021 19:32

Oh and I just offered boob...that's what they want!

Sunshinegirl82 · 27/11/2021 19:44

I fed both of mine back to sleep every 2 hours(ish) for at least the first year. It worked so the quicker I got on with it the quicker I got to go back to sleep!

Nix99 · 27/11/2021 19:51

Thank you both. I'm ok if it's something that will pass on its own I just didnt want to draw things out for her if we did need to sleep train or anything so its reassuring to know it's normal.

OP posts:
UpToMyElbowsInDiapers · 27/11/2021 22:13

Just to give an alternate point of view, while this is something that definitely CAN happen, it isn’t something that HAS to happen.

We sleep trained my eldest two DCs at 7 or 8 months, as they were teeny tiny and needed all the calories they could get. But DC3 we sleep trained using the Ferber method at 4 months. We chose to keep 1 feed at night, which I give him if he wakes up any time after 1:30am, but if he wakes up any time before that (or after a feed), my DH goes in to check he isn’t poopy or stuck in between crib rails, pats his bum for a few seconds, says goodnight, and leaves. DS can “protest cry” for a few minutes but that is every unusual. It happens maybe once every week or two.

TBH, we had DS’s 6-month well baby visit this past week and the paediatrician thought I was being a bit precious still offering him one feed. Apparently there’s no need for it. She herself has two kids under 4, breastfed both, but sleep trained and night weaned by 6 months, as have most of my mum friends.

Parenting is exhausting enough during the day. You don’t HAVE to set yourself up for exhausting nights too! And night weaning does not mean the end of breastfeeding. I went back to work with DS2 was 6 months old but carried on breastfeeding and pumping until he was 20 months old.

Nix99 · 28/11/2021 16:16

The same night I wrote this she did a 7 hour stretch. Fingers crossed it continues.

OP posts:
UpToMyElbowsInDiapers · 28/11/2021 23:30

Woohoo! That’s great news!

Bechange997 · 17/05/2025 22:39

Probably because you laugh react to everyone’s posts

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