6 month old night wakings

[ZEWatson]

Hi. My 6 month old is put to bed around 8pm (fed to sleep) and put in cot, will often wake between sleep cycles and need comforting back to sleep until we come to bed around 10pm and I'll usually dream feed her. She then wakes anything from 2-10 times before getting up at 6am. I almost always feed her back to sleep BUT when I place her back in the cot she wakes almost instantly. We're trying to transition out of a swaddling sleeping bag but she just seems to wake herself startling or by rubbing her eyes or hitting the cot. Usually getting her back to sleep isn't the problem, it's putting her back in her cot without waking. I've tried a nest, warming the sheet, soft sheet, keeping my arms firmly on her etc. Last week or so she's waking at 3am and I'm not able to get her back to sleep in her cot, so neither of us are sleeping. She's a very fussy baby and cries in the cot if left in there awake. I'm thinking I'm going to have to change her habbits/ our routine. I guess I'm just looking for advice/ to hear other people's experiences and how they've broken the habits. She's having 2 30 minute naps in the day on average so some days only sleeping around 8 hours total 😴

I've got 3DC including 16m DD. My 1st just didn't sleep but this baby does. I feed to sleep still (it is a routine I don't mind as it works for us. I'd be more interested in getting those daytime naps longer. When DD was that age I still gave most of her naps in the carrier. Upright next to me to get all the gas out helped her get at least 1 hour + of sleep- absolutely sucked being upright myself but id go for a walk. After 6m id give bm and food b4 nap and that helped. With all 3 of mine gas is what kept waking them. Yours sounds like they feel safe and warm then sudden wake up and comfort has gone. It takes time and unfortunately it really depends on baby- all 3 of mine was so so different

I constantly recommend Dr Ferber’s book. Really useful in understanding the mechanics of sleep. We did sleep training at 6 months (after reading the book) and it was life changing overnight. And did not involve much crying.

I was very against it before reading the book but felt I had no other option as my DS was such a bad sleeper. I’m so glad we did it, my DS is now 2 and I’m still constantly thankful we did it. Other people I know with toddlers that didn’t sleep train are still up in the night with them at this age.

Basically if you’ve never learnt to fall asleep on your own, it’s really hard to stay asleep. Your brain wakes and checks for “danger” between each sleep cycle. If someone was with you when you went to sleep, and when you stir they’ve vanished, your brain thinks something is “wrong” and will wake you up fully. Whereas if you were expecting to be alone, your brain stirs, checks everything is okay, and you go back into your next sleep cycle.

Thanks. I'm going to take a look 😁

We had this issue so just coslept until about 9-10 months when we sleep trained.

My DD was the same- BF till I went back to work c. 12 months old and still woke in the night until I stopped BFing. Still used to wake a bit in the night so we have her milk in a bottle which helped her sleep but was terrible for her teeth - only discovered this later when she turned into a fruit fiend and that plus the milk led to fillings 😩
Top tip - get baby onto half milk/half water if they need anything at night and gradually dilute it down to just water.
She sleeps like a log now and has done since prob age 2!