Seven-month-old still waking frequently at night, what else can I try?

[Summersun91]

I posted back in February as my baby had started waking up between 6-10 times a night at 3.5 months. She’s now 7.5 months and since then there has been no improvement. The last few weeks she has actually woken fewer times (5-8), but she no longer feeds to sleep so I can be up for an hour after a feed trying to get her back to sleep.

She goes to sleep independently at bedtime in her cot. She is formula fed during the day and BF at night (4/5 times).

I am my wits end, I need sleep and I don’t know what to do. The only thing remaining I haven’t tried is Ferber which I didn’t want to do but I can’t keep going like this.

I’ve tried settling without feeding for 20mins if it’s a short sleep and she just cries (or wakes again 5 mins later). I’ve tried Cosleeping which stops the crying but doesn’t stop the wake ups and she wriggles all night so I still can’t sleep. I can’t get her to sleep in my arms and transfer as she never goes into a deep sleep. I’ve tried varying nap times and total nap sleep but makes zero difference. I can’t usually nap during the day as I have a toddler as well. My partner tries to help but he can’t settle her either.

A typical day/night was like this (yesterday):
Wake: 6.30
Nap 1: 9.30-10.30
Nap 2: 1.30-3.30
Bedtime: 7.00
Wake 1: 9.20 (fed and I went to bed)
Wake 2: 11.35 (tried to settle for 15 min, she fell asleep then woke 10min later, fed at 12.00)
Wake 3: 1.30 (fed)
Wake 4: 2.45 (tried to settle for 20min, failed, fed, tried to put down to sleep for 20min, gave up at 3.40 and brought into my bed where she was quiet but wriggled for an hour)
Wake 5: 4.50 (fed in my bed, she went back to sleep and wriggled/cried intermittently for an hour)
Wake up 6.00

So I’ve been awake since 2.45 as I can’t sleep when she’s wriggling next to me, with a couple of hours of broken sleep before that.

I’m losing my mind. What else can I do/should I try Ferber? I don’t want to listen to her crying but I’m desperate for some sleep.

I mostly came here for advice as my 5mo wakes a lot to feed, but I agree that could well be too much daytime sleep! We accidentally had a late 10pm bedtime a week ago and she suddenly did a 4 hour chuck which hasn’t happened since 3.5mo! Since then she now has around 3h total daytime naps, normally split over 4 naps. Then around 10 hours nighttime sleep, with maybe 3-4 wakes on average when it used to be 6-7. It’s only been a week but it changed straight away. She’s very content so that’s right for her at 5mo, even though it’s only 13 hours.

From my limited knowledge the recommendations are often higher than average sleep needs, and your baby might be lower than average, so it might be wrong by a few hours!

i would give her a big bottle before you go to bed in a dream feed -can be formula or expressed

And a dummy

Honestly, sleep train. She sounds very like my DD1, and lack of sleep was affecting her as much as me. It was like magic (and for us, involved less crying than seeing around with all the ‘gentle’ methods which just seemed to annoy her).

Someone above mentioned talking to a HV… when I did that the HV told me that she would sleep if she felt loved. Which was both useless and rude!

Thank you so much for all the replies. I need to go through the rest in more detail but I started yesterday by capping the second nap at 1 hour so will try that for a couple of weeks.

Last night we had 7 wake ups, including awake for an hour between 11 and 12.

Thanks for explaining, this makes more sense now so will be something I definitely look into.

Thank you.

I have started by capping the second nap to 1 hour.

The number of hours for night sleep is more difficult to count and manage due to all the wake ups and the different pattern each night. For example she was awake for an hour in the night last night (plus all the extra wake ups), not sure waking her at 6am (which would be 11 hours in bed) is the right thing to do?

I'd stick to a consistent morning wake time regardless of the night. 10-11 hours overnight is average. an hour awake is really showing she doesn't need as much sleep as you are aiming for.

Like others have said the 2nd nap is too long. I'd limit it to 1.5 hours and try for a third nap. Bedtime seems about right though. Our mostly formula fed eldest mostly slept through from 8 weeks, naps were terrible from the start though, once we sorted them the nights were fine.

it sounds really hard for you at the moment. My 2 never needed as much sleep as the apps say. Also does she have a dummy? If she does, maybe she is waking looking for that? If she doesn’t, introducing one may help comfort her. Though I know not everyone likes dummies. Mine stopped waking for night feeds around 8 months. Good luck!

If your target bedtime is 7pm then I would wake her at 6am no matter how the night went. She will lose sleep for a couple of days while it consolidates, she will be tired and possibly grumpy. This is not harmful in the short term.

Thanks, no she doesn’t use a dummy, she wouldn’t take one when she was a newborn and I haven’t tried again recently. I might try out of interest to see if she takes one, but not sure I want to commit to it at night, I understand it could cause more wakes if it keeps coming out?!

Thanks, I am glad to hear it worked well for you. That’s interesting it involved less crying that you thought, as my “gentle” settling gets nowhere with just lots of screaming!

Your health visitor seems worse than mine!

5 days into limiting daytime naps to 2hours total, and 4 days into waking up at 6am (so capping nighttime “sleep” at 11 hours and there is zero improvement so far. I will keep going for a few more days but unfortunately it’s not looking like that’s the solution.

Honestly I do agree with poster above that sleep training the way I described upthread was less screaming and crying than all the night wake ups where I was getting desperate and my DS was getting more upset as I was getting more tired!

Have you tried formula at night before you go to bed…so a dream feed? Might be worth a try incase it’s hunger?

Totally agree, DS was crying for an hour and a half while I tried to rock and feed him to sleep. First night of sleep training he cries 30 mins while I comforted him in his cot. By fourth night went to sleep within 5 mins with no upset. He needed space.

You could try a floor bed or cosleeping where you have two matresses next to each other so actually you have two separate beds write next to each other so you can lie to sleep and then move away. You could stop feeding to sleep but just lie and play music or whatever. Huckleberry is great but I think you often need to look four months ahead to see what you should be doing now(unless u have a super easy baby) my first was doing 7am wake 45 min nap 45min nap 8 alseep at that age ( slept at night like a champ) second wake 8 2 one hour naps asleep at 10pm then usually one wake up but would have occasional nights where she woke up at 11pm and then screamed till 5am but afterwards she never did catch up on sleep so I am convinced she sleep screamed and was actually very well rested (to my horror) she found her teeth coming through so hard and was very sensitive to having a blocked nose. Ie sniffle = screaming. You could not feed to sleep but burp and lie down with them and sing or watch YouTube. My second would sometime not do the whole night screaming death spiral if I got her up changed her nappy and watched YouTube with her for an hour sitting in the living room. I would then just go to bed with her and she would sleep. Maybe she just really
likes watching YouTube (not kids I watched things I liked) with the not feeding you could go to sleep not feeding so sleep the. Burp cha fe get ready for bed do a little bed time routine then on wake up one you simply lie next to her then wake up two feed to sleep (my point being it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.