Sleep training 6 month old?

[user2025user]

We have a 6 month old BF baby boy who sleeps 2-3hrs at a time at night so we are interested in some sleep training and would love to hear others opinions/success stories?
Everyone else’s babies seem to sleep 7am - 7pm and it’s really difficult with work to keep up with the night wakings we have! I also don’t want to have to stop BF just to get him to sleep more.
He usually goes down around 8/9pm depending on his last nap/wake window, and wakes around 8am.
For his last feed at night we have recently started giving him a bottle of formula too (5-7 scoops) after he has fed off both sides, just to make sure he is as full as he wants to be.
I’ve also stopped feeding him to sleep for naps, so he knows how to go to sleep by himself now.
Open to all suggestions as to what we can do to get him to sleep longer/other people’s experiences!

Possibly controversial but with our first we:

• did a full bath and bed routine, I fed her to almost sleep and then put her in her cot
• closed the door and left her for five minutes to cry
• went back in and cuddled her, maximum of about a minute, then put her back down and left
• repeat

The plan was to go in every five minutes and cuddle her and then leave again, but we only had to go in twice on the first night and then she started totally sleeping through! Haven’t had a disturbed night since.

I’d focus on night time sleep OR naps for a bit; once one is working, the other tends to fall into place too!

Thanks @CaptainJasonthats super useful. What age did you start this at? Were you breastfeeding?

@user2025user she was 7 months I think, and yep she was EBF!

I don't have advice as my 7 month old baby -DC3 - wakes roughly 2hrly all night for milk too, but is often also awake for an hour in the middle of the night as well.

All I will say is that:

• DC2 was also breastfed at this age and only woke twice a night briefly for feeds, overall better sleeper. We haven't done anything differently.
• For all my children, they didn't sleep longer or better after they'd had a bottle, it's never affected their sleep
• I know a lot of people with children now and I don't know a single one of them whose babies were sleeping 12hrs a night uninterrupted at 6 months! I'm not saying it never happens, but it's certainly very unusual. I know plenty of people whose babies were/are waking frequently at night though. Exhausting but common.

Sleeping through is actually classed as sleeping for 6 consecutive hours, not 12. I honestly do not know one single 6 month old that does or hasn't woken in the night for a feed, EBF or formula fed. It's so natural for an infant to wake, it's biologically what they're supposed to do. Never sleep trained any of mine, think it's cruel.

We did Ferber, similar to what the first poster described, at 6 months. Worked really well and only took 2-3 nights before our baby was sleeping through the night

I hate these threads. Baby is six months old fgs, they're meant to be feeding during the night still if needed.

“Everyone else’s babies seem to sleep 7 am - 7 pm” - they definitely don’t!

Could you co-sleep? My baby wakes in the night but I barely notice it. I never intended to co-sleep but after torturing myself with trying all the sleep tricks with my eldest, I have taken the easier route with babies 2 and 3, and I’ve honestly never felt tired or stressed.

Personally, I would never sleep train, but I know that’s controversial.

I also had a positive experience with sleep training. I did get a sleep consultant on board to help me as nothing I tried myself seemed to work. But within 2-3 days of getting help we had our little one sleeping 11-12 hours straight. I was so skeptical to get help, especially as I’m also EBF, but so glad we did. There was nothing cruel about the sleep training we did as well, as that was a concern of mine before we started.