Please help 6 month sleep is awful!

[Lizbiz89]

My ds (nearly 7 months) has never been the best sleeper. Usually wakes 2-4 a night. He wasn't bad during newborn stage and then 4 month regression hit and it just hasn't improved since. At the moment he goes to sleep at 8pm, wakes for a feed at 10pm then he'll wake up at 1am (sometimes before) and after that he wakes pretty much every hour after that. I try to self settle him but he screams so I eventually put him on the boob. He sleeps in our room as well. I did try and put him in his own room but it didn't work as I was still getting up multiple times a night. Any ideas would be really appreciated. I cannot keep functioning like this, especially as I've got 2 older children to look after. I'm happy to feed him in the night but every hour is literally breaking me. I should mention he's also having 3 naps a day as well. I'm so tempted to contact a sleep consultant at this point as I just don't know what to do.

How are the naps? At that age mine dropped down to 2 naps, but not all babies are ready for it yet. Any red flags, like tummy aches or reflux that could be causing it? Does he go back to sleep easily enough with a feed?

To be honest though, waking frequently and especially towards the tail end of the night, can be completely normal for a 7-month-old, as much as it does suck. Mine slept like shit at that age too, and I've seen soooooo many comments from other parents that 7-10 months was the absolute worst. I coslept with mine so that I could just lift my top and drift off back to sleep when he woke. Tried everything else, bar sleep training, and nothing made a difference - tried to tweak naps, focused on feeding lots during the day and moved up to three solid meals a day, kept busy and offered lots of sensory input, tried him in his own room in case I was disturbing him. But he slept how he slept.

His naps aren't bad but he does still have them in his swinger. Naps 9.30-10.30am, 1-2:30pm then has a half an hour nap at 4ish. I did start putting him in his cot for his naps but he just wouldn't settle and would wake 15 minutes after putting him down every time. Really reassuring to know that you went through the same. I don't remember my 1st 2 sleeping this badly but they were both fully formula fed by 6 months so I think my husband was able to help with settling them at night when they woke. With my ds being ebf he will only settle with me so it's all on me which is hard.

Yes it was hard! Especially being the only one able to do the night wakes. We had a handover in the early morning at around 4am that whatever time he wakes next is deemed morning and my husband gets up with him and gives him breakfast. So after the 4am feed I put my ear plugs in and went to sleep in our spare bed. My husband had to leave for work at 8.30am so I got a good 4 hour chunk of sleep then.

Mine didn’t nap in his bed either until he was 9 months. Until then it was contact naps only. I used that time to rest as well, sometimes even had a nap with him. That’s probably not as easy if you have other children home with you?

I might try contact naps as well. My older 2 are at school in the day so that makes it easier. Although weekends are another story! When did you feel things started to improve? After 10 months?

Yes it got a bit better from then as I started dropping the night feeds, first kind of by accident, and by 11 months we were down to just one night feed and my husband did settling at night when it wasn’t feed time. But he didn’t actually start sleeping much better until 13 months, he was waking every 2-3 hours until one night he just didn’t. Literally overnight went from several wakes to sleeping through. It could be a coincidence or not but he slept through exactly one week after I’d dropped the last night feed. 🤷🏼‍♀️

And did the dropping of feeds come naturally? Also when did you transfer him into his own room? Sorry for the questions! I've never been in this position before so it's all new to me. Whole new ball game with breastfed babies.

Yeah it did kinda! I’d gone out to dinner with my girlfriends and my husband was in charge until about 11pm. He had some formula at his disposal but chose not to use it and bounced him instead when he woke up, he woke once before I got back home. When he woke once I was home again I fed him, then the rest of the night he didn’t want milk and went back to sleep as soon as I got there and laid down next to him.

We moved him in his own room at 8 months but I moved with him 😅 we got a queen size floor bed so I could fit in next to him if needed (and I did need to) and started putting him to bed there first and then I’d go in next to him when he woke. Gradually started trying to spend more time in my own bed but it was a good while of one of us finishing the night from about 2-3am in his room.