6 month old started to feed all night!

[mollysmum82]

Please help I'm really struggling to cope! My 6 month old baby was sleeping through till about a month ago (I felt so lucky!) but then she started to wake up once in the night again. This was fine, I breastfed her and she settled down to sleep again quickly. Once in the night turned to twice, then three times and again I was happy to breastfeed her and she would settle quickly. I tried to increase her milk feeds in the day to every 2 hours to see if this would help and it did for one night. But then she was back to waking a few times a night. For the past week its been unbearable - she wakes every half hour to hour, I feed her, put her down and she wakes again only minutes later. I've tried not feeding her but then she wakes even sooner. She was teething (at least I think she was, she had a sore bum and was dribbling etc) but these symptoms appeared to have eased off so I don't think its that? No teeth have emerged as yet! I started her on solids a couple of days after she was up all night (this coincided with her turning 6 months) but this has not helped either. At the moment I'm resorting to holding her all night, just to ensure she gets some sleep but I'm absoultely shattered and I don't want to form bad sleep associations for her.

I really hope you can offer some advice!

x

If she's taking lots of milk in the day, she's probably not really hungry in the night and needing hourly feeds. However my bf DDs loved a feed to get them back to sleep/to soothe them.

Babies wake for lots of reasons in the night and you have to try and work out if its because they're hungry / habit / trying it on (both my DDs were little madams) / will take food because its offered / teething / something else is wrong. Just because teeth haven't appeared doesn't mean they're not teething. My DD1 had teething symptoms on and off for months before they popped through. Its easiest to work out what's wrong if you're not tired!!

So, what we used to do with DD1 is, put her to bed in her cot as normal. If she woke before we went to bed (and couldn't be hungry because she'd fed well and we thought she was trying it on) my DH used to do controlled crying for me whilst I sat downstairs away from it all. If she woke in the night, we would do co-sleeping. My DH and I would take it in turns to have her with us whilst the other slept in another bed and tried to get a good nights sleep. We'd find that after a couple of nights (normally when my DH was fed up of sleeping apart) she'd start sleeping all night in her cot. I'd still feed her if I thought she was hungry - but this is easier to work out when you're not over tired yourself! DD is now 3 and sleeps all night in her own bed so I don't think we ruined her!

Hope it all goes well for you - try and get some help so you can catch up on your sleep during the day. You can then look at it rationally.

This sounds EXACTLY like what is happening to us. Our daughter was almost sleeping through (just waking at 5am for a feed and then back to sleep) and then once she hit 6 months she started waking up a lot. Now she is 7.5 months and wakes up every 2 hours. I am exhausted.

I have spoken to other mothers in my NCT group and they have had the same thing.

So no advice just LOTS of sympathy. It is even making me want to give up breastfeeding I am so shattered.

Aw thanks very much for your advice and support!

I spoke to the health visitor today and she was rather brutal (but maybe that's what I need??) She said this was typical behaviour at 6 months. She said that if she had slept through previously I should never have fed her that one time in the night as she then learned this bad behaviour! She said that Molly's interrupted sleep would be stunting her growth and development so the only way to rectify this would be to do controlled crying!

So now I feel awful! Guilty for holding her all night and allowing her sleep to continue to be disrupted and guilty for even considering the idea of controlled crying!

She said that weaning her would help.. but said that I shouldn't be doing baby led weaning if I ever wanted her to sleep through.

Now I'm so confused! It has always been my instinct to breastfeed her whenever she wanted and it has felt so right to do baby led weaning. But this lady is a professional and has got me thinking I'm stunting dd in some way!

Sounds like HV is talking rubbish. I had a really similar thing with DS at 5 months--he'd slept through from 8 weeks but suddenly was waking and feeding half the night. I ended up with DS in my bed and DH in the spare room for about a week. Finally got him back to his cot but he kept waking. HV said 'full steam ahead' on weaning, but I came to MN and read the weaning advice and decided against it (I also wanted to do BLW and wait till 6 months).

The good news for me was that the waking did eventually stop. We tried controlled crying for a number of days, but every time we went back in the room we were disturbing him even more and this would go on for hours. DH finally convinced me (on the advice of his friend who has two DC) to just let him cry one night, and lo and behold he went to sleep after 10 minutes! Longest 10 minutes of my life, but it worked.

We held off on the weaning till 6 months, and have been BLW for a little over 2 weeks now. DS is back to sleeping through the night (but this already happened without weaning him).

Some nights DS will go to bed without a peep (even though I put him down awake), some nights he screams for a bit--but it doesn't last very long. It seems like some nights he just needs to do it. It was very hard for me, I had to make DH take him to bed because I kept wanting to go back in!

It's developmental, as is confirmed by all the other people saying 'me too'. When they're going through big developmental changes they lose the ability to sleep and cannot switch off. Night time parenting is important in settling your child who is struggling and can't switch off on his/her own. It's a phase, it doesn't last forever. Sleep patterns change as they change and around the time of big milestones (sitting, crawling, pulling up and then walking, talking etc) they just can't do it on their own.

You hv is talking crap. And controlled crying -though I would never advocate it at any age- is really not recommended with a 6 month old.

It is so very hard I know, but it's not forever. There are gentle methods if you want to pursue them.

Thanks for your replies!

SHE SLEPT THROUGH LAST NIGHT!!!! WHOOHOO!

We tried a slightly gentler version of controlled crying - I went through the normal bath and bed time routine, breastfed dd and then cuddled her loads till she fell asleep. She woke on cue about ten minutes later and I didn't go in the room for a minute (longest minute ever haha!) I then went in but didn't pick her up, I just stroked her tummy, kissed her and spoke to her reassuringly. She started to cry more and more as she is so used to immediately being picked up. But after a couple of minutes I held my breath and left the room when she was still crying. I felt so so guilty. I then went back two minutes later and did the same thing, then five minutes later, then ten. Within half an hour it was all over and she was fast asleep. She then slept through the night!!! I couldn't believe it! I didn't sleep though, I was feeling too guilty so I sat waiting for her to wake up! She didn't till 5:30am! And the nice thing was she woke up with a smile on her face and didn't hate me or seem upset, she was refreshed for the day. I did the same last night and she fell asleep within 15 minutes.

I feel so lucky that's this is all its taken (SO FAR!) as I think I would have caved if she'd cried any longer. I do worry about the effects of this but I guess it is only a few nights and as long as I give her lots of cuddles and love in the day she will be okay? Maybe I'm just convincing myself!

I just hope now she can sleep she will be able to grow and develop as normal (unless what the HV said was rubbish!) and I hope I'll be a better and more awake mummy!

I'm saying this sounding like I've got it all sorted but it only has been 2 nights, haha! It make been back to the drawing board tonight!

Your HV was talking utter, utter rubbish.

well done - glad it worked for you!
HV is talking crap BTW, but they often are, sadly.
We have the same issue here, 6 mo DD waking up at 2 and 5am, while she used to sleep through. We plan on moving her to her own bed tomorrow night (she sleeps there during the day already)and maybe give CC a go...
Hope it'll work for us too!