Help! I need some sleep! My DD is 7 ½ months old and keeps me up most of the night. She has a bedtime routine. Quiet play time and a story followed by a bath with DS and Daddy then a massage, some supper of cereal, a full breast feed and then to be bed sleepy after being burped. She sleeps in a cot in our room. She does have a room of her own to go into but it is next to DS?s and I don?t want her waking him up in the night plus it is a hassle for me to keep going there when she wakes rather than having her beside me. It is very dark in our room and around 18c. She sleeps in a sleeping bag with a blanket tucking her in tight over that. She goes down at about 8pm. She always wakes up crying again before midnight wanting more milk. She will not be pacified by DH or by anything other than more milk. I have tried patting, water but none of these things work. I don?t want to do controlled crying. She gets so upset so quickly and her cry is very loud and we live in an apartment and DS is a very light sleeper. I feed her from one side generally and then she goes to sleep again. She will then wake up again at least twice more in the night and it is the same routine. On the second wakening I always change her nappy as she is generally very wet by then. I have to admit I often fall asleep with her as I am so tired so sometimes it is over an hour before she goes back into her cot again.
She is a tall baby and weighs 9.2kgs. She is on the 91st percentile and has been since birth. I am exclusively breastfeeding her and she won?t take a bottle but will take water and some quantities of expressed milk from a cup. She is often distracted from drinking her milk during the daytime feeds and I?m sure that?s why she stocks up at night but I can?t stop the disruption as it is down to my DS who is just 2 and at home with us all the time too. She eats 3 or 4 small solid meals a day including protein and finger food now. She doesn?t really like savoury food but loves cold fruit purees and yoghurts. She has 7 teeth and another coming through and she does suffer with teething.
She doesn?t seem to need much sleep as isn?t grouchy after our broken nights. She tends to have a brief nap for 30-45 mins around 10.30/11 am and then a nap mid afternoon for anytime between 45mins-2 hours. If her mid afternoon nap is short she tends to need another one around 6pm before her dinner at 6.30pm.
I should add that we live in Southern Spain hence the reason why our timings are later than in the UK to fit in around life here.
She doesn't have a dummy or anything that she is attached to other than me.
Any tips on how to get her sleeping through at night would be greatly appreciated. I need my wits about me during the day to look after these two!