early night wakings

[teezee]

dd has been sleeping better since cutting back on the solids...and started eating better until the teething started.  now it seems that when i put her down at around 8pm for bed by 9 or 9:30 she wakes up screaming.  i try pu/pd, rocking her, soothing her any way possible but she seems to have gas and is stiff as a board.  within a few minutes she'll get the gas out and want to eat after i had just fed her before she went down.  so i guess my question is - is it normal for her to be waking to eat at this time? lately she's been cluster feeding at 4 6 8 and then waking for an additional feeding AND i dreamfeed her!  now she hasn't been taking as much during the day so could this be the cause??  after  i dreamfeed her she goes about 4 hrs and then about 3 and half hrs before another feeding.  i have her on 4 hr easy throughout the day, it just seems by dinnertime it's starting to fall apart.

[Katet]

I think cluster feeding is the problem...after about 4mo it actually can result in snacking, rather than tanking up... so I would suggest dropping the 6pm.
Also babies that wake up within the first 2 hours of bedtime are often overtired...when is her last nap & what is her day routine like?

My 6mo can still only last 2 hours from his catnap to bedtime, so if your lo is having a long stretch of awake time before bed then she is probably over tired too.

HTH

[teezee]

about the cluster feeding that is precisely what i thought and stopped today and she seemed to be just fine with it!

routine:

E 4:30 or 5 am
back to sleep
wake & play by herself 8:00 or 8:15
E 8:30-8:45 am
A 9:15 am
S 10:30am (usually 2 hrs sometimes a little less)
E 12:30
A 1:00
S 2:30
E 4:00 or 4:30 (depending on when she wakes up, we try and stretch it if she is up early from a nap)
A 4:30
S 5:15 (catnap)
A 6:00 (bath, give medicine, vitamin d, etc)
E 7:45
S 8:15pm
DF 11:00 pm

that was our schedule today with the cluster feedings cut out, she's not 100% consistant with wake up times in the morning (if it's a little later trust me i don't mind), and mostly i read her signs so if there is a day she only has 1 hr and a half A time so be it!,  so it varies within a half hour or so some days.
i realize that she didn't have a full 4 hrs between feeds this evening but she was getting tired.  sometimes she doesn't want the catnap and just fights it - so in that case would i just put her to sleep for the night at six o clock?? and do i wake her to feed her at 8:00 pm then? or do an extra dreamfeed?  i realize some days she gets overtired (when she doesn't have her catnap) but i think more of the problem is overstimulation in the evening (that's when family comes to visit, my mom and dh get home from work and everyone is so excited to see her and they just want to make her giggle )  anyway, thanks for the help!