7 month old still waking in the night but not for a feed!

[wigglemama]

My 7 month old dd had been waking between 3 and 4 o clock for a feed up until about a week ago. She has dropped the feed but still wakes up!

I have tried soothing her then putting her back down, but she will not settle until she is in bed with me-which I know is a bad habit that I am helping her develop by letting it happen. I just get to the point where I need to sleep!

I would leave her to cry (not for a long time, just 1 or 2 minutes at a time before comforting) but she is in the same room as ds and I am so worried about him being woken up too that any little squeak from dd and I whip her out of the room pronto. In saying that, she's not always crying sometimes she wakes up and just chats and gurgles-but very loudly.

So, any experience or wise words for me? Should I just let her go and if she wakes ds, then she wakes him?

I reckon it'll be the birds waking her up. My DS (5) wakes about that time and comes into us. I got up to go to the loo and heard them all singing away as if it was the middle of the morning.
However saying that, I don't have any solutions - apart from shooting the birds

I think (having read the baby whisperer) that this is a waking habit because she knows lovely mummy comes to pick her up! So she's programmed herself to wake up for you.

Easy for me to say, but I'd be inclined to soothe her as well as you can without picking up, then leg it and hope that ds doesn't wake. Once she twigs that you aren't going to whip her away, she might stop bothering.

How easily does ds fall back to sleep?

Thanks for replies ladies! I think we may have had a break through. The past 2 nights when she stirred I went in, shoved put her dummy in and, as you so eloquently put it mistress, "legged it"! She had a bit of a winge but I just left her and within minutes she dropped off! DS called out dreamily something about not wanting to go to nursery but didn't wake Please please please let this be repeated! She did wake at half 5 but I don't mind bringing her into bed with us for an hour before she gets up.

Wigglemama, thanks for your question, I have a similar problem with my 4 month old, however in my case, he seems to wake up at 3ish every morning, and I have to keep putting the dummy back in his mouth and eventually he'll go back to sleep. How do I get him out of that habit though, it's driving me nuts. I guess I shouldn't complain because at least I get to sleep until 3am, but I'm just exhausted from all these months of little sleep.