Night wakings at 6.5 months. I am slowly losing my mind!

[MGF]

Hi hope you can help!

My 6.5 month old is still waking at least twice in a night and we can't decide if it's AP or hunger. I am using PUPD which is slowly working with at worse it taking over an hour at best ten minutes. His routine is:

7am - wake and breakfast (bf and baby porridge with fruit)
7.30-8.45ish - activity
Between 8.45-9am - ready for a nap sometimes he goes down well for this sometimes it's a PUPD battle on good days he sleeps 1.5 hours on bad just 45 minutes
Between 10.30.-11am - eat (bf and lunch)
11am-1pm - activity
1pm- 2.30pm - nap (this is normally his best nap)
2.30pm - eat (bf and snack)
2.30pm - 5pm - activity
5pm - eat (bf and dinner)
5.45pm - start wind down
6pm - bath
6.30pm - bf
6.45pm - bed

He usually settles at this time really well. I put him down awake and rarely needs PUPD just a hand on the back if he stirs. Usually by 7.15pm he is well away

He then sleeps happily until 12am and then he wakes up fuming! I get to him straight away and do PUPD but it takes anything from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours.

He then sleep till anything from 4am to 5.30am but when he wake up this time I feed him because he seems starving. He then goes back to sleep and wakes up playing in his cot at 7am every morning regardless of how bad the night was.

I guess the questions are should I feed him at 4am? Should I reinstate the dream feed? He hasn't had this for about a month and didn't miss it for a while.

I also need to wean him off breast feeding by July but don't want to do that whilst still trying to get him to sleep.

It's worth noting that I am running my own business and we do have very busy days and he is a spirited baby and is already sitting unaided and crawling.

Any advice out there?
Thanks! X

[PaulsMom]

Hi there!

Ok, I have a couple of suggestions.  I've noted that your first A time is quite short so I'm wondering if you push that out gradually until he's up for 2 hr 45 min or so, he may not fight the first nap so much or give you a short nap.  Usually 6.5 mo olds are doing roughly 2.75 hrs of awake time.  By pushing out the morning nap, the pm nap will start later and then he will not have such a long time between his pm nap and bt.

If he's waking consistently at midnight, you could try wake 2 sleep.  Here is some info
How to address habitual wakings (w2s and other methods). With this technique you just need to gently rouse him and not fully wake him around 11 pm. 

Wrt feeding him at 4 am, if he's taking a full feed and going back down right after, I would consider continuing as its not uncommon for babies this age to feed at night.  If you want to gently wean that feed, you can consider feeding for less time if you bf or if you bottle feed, the link gives you a plan.
How we stopped the night feeds with a 9 month old

Wrt the df, I wouldn't start this up as your Lo is getting to an age when most Los drop it.

HTH