6.5 month old waking every night after 6 hours of sleep?

[RebeccaAS]

Hi, Everyone -

I feel that my daughter is on a pretty good schedule throughout the day.  She nurses every 4 hours and in between is eating solids (rice cereal and fruit/vegetable) 3 times/day.  She also takes two naps/day.  The morning nap lasts about 1.5-2 hours and the afternoon nap is a bit shorter - around 45 minutes.

She is thriving and is overall an extremely healthy and happy baby.  What I am perplexed about is the fact that she will only go 6 hours at night before waking.  She goes down every night at 8pm, and wakes at 2am every night.  Typically, I let her CIO for awhile before going in to comfort her and I end up nursing her as she seems hungry. But, I never feed her before 3am.  Once she eats, she goes back to sleep easily until about 7:30am each day.  The pediatrician told me that it's still ok to feed her once at night.  I'm afraid, however, that I've created a bad habit.  Should she be eating in the middle of the night at 6.5 months old?  How do I get her to sleep a longer stretch than 6 hours at a time?

Thanks for any insight!

[Erin M]

Honestly, she sounds hungry.  I'd go to her when she first starts crying (unless you're talking about a mantra cry, in which case you would give her a few minutes to see if she's settling or not -- but if she starts crying an "I need you" cry, you should go to her right away) and feed her.  If she's settling right away and going back to sleep, you'll probably save yourself a whole lot of time by feeding right away. 

There's some info on night feeds here that might put your mind at ease: Night Feeds and the Breast Fed Baby -- all 3 of mine were actually still eating during the night at 6.5 months.  Another thing is that if she's taking a lot of solids (3 meals is a lot for a 6.4 month old), it will take away from her milk intake and cause her to take less calories during the day.  Breastmilk/formula is much richer in fat and calories than any solids you could be giving at this age, so if solids are causing her to take less milk during the day, she'll make up for it at night.