6 1/2 month old night wakings

[Lindsam1004]

Hi everyone. My daughter is 6 1/2 months old and we just moved her into her crib 2 weeks ago. She's never been a great sleeper, but she was consistently doing 3-5 hour stretches for the first part of her night when she was in our room.  Since moving her, she wakes Upanishad hour and a half into the night and can usually get back with popping in the pacifier and patting her. Then she's usually up again in another hour and a half and sometimes can go back down easily like before and other times at this point it takes over an hour with lots of screaming involved. I do pu/pd but I try to stick with patting her because she gets more upset every time i put her back down. Some nights after the second hour and a half wake up, she will go back down for 4-5 hours (and once 6 hours!!), but other times she's up after 20 minutes, 10 min, etc. She falls asleep on her own with the pacifier at around 7:30. I try to wait to feed until around 1-2 and she will eat again around 5. I'm okay with these for now. She's ebf and only weighs 13lbs so she's not quite cut down on the feelings yet, but this is a huge improvement. My question is. Why can't she settle herself back down in between sleep cycles since transitioning to her room and what can I do to help that and also, how come some nights she will only go back to sleep if she eats (she will take a full feed around midnight.  if she's screaming and won't settle down I feed her). And other nights she can go 4 hours after the initial hour and a half wake ups.
Sorry if this is all over the place. This is my first time posting here!

[Kellyjs]

Hi and welcome to the boards 

Would you mind posting your day time routine for me in real time please? So not what you're aiming for, just what the last two days looked like in easy format if you wouldn't mind. Helps me get a clear picture as to what's happening there.

So something like this:
Wu time
E
A
S how long for etc etc all the way to BT and including all the NW's if you can.

Does she go to sleep independently for naps and BT? Do you think she could be teething atm? Look forward to hearing from you Xx

[Lindsam1004]

Hi!

This is what our schedule has looked like lately.

Wake up 6:45
We do activity from 6:45 - 8 because she still eats around 4:30-5am  and she doesn't want to eat again until 8. I sure this isn't good, but I'm new to baby whisperer!
E - 8am
A - 8:30 - 9
S - 9am this is usually an hour and a half
E - 11am
A - 11:30 - 1
S - 1pm this is usually 45 min
E - 2pm
A - 2:30 - 4:15
S - 4:15 this is about a half hour
E - 5pm
A - 5:30 - 7
Bedtime routine starts at 7, eat around 7:10 and sleeping by 7:30

She will go down easy and is normally back up at 9, sometimes will go right back down. Then she's up an hour and a half from when she fell asleep and sometimes we can get her back down and she will sleep until between 1-2 then eat and sometimes she won't go back in her crib and after an hour and a half we bring her back in our room. Then she's up again at 4:30-5ish to eat and back down until 6:45.

We have been keeping her in our room after that first feed, which i know is bad but we've been unsuccessful in getting her back in her crib and I'm trying to just get a few hours straight of sleep. Obviously i want to stop doing that, I just want to get through the holidays first 

She doesn't go down for naps on her own. I have to rock her and when i put her down she will only sleep for a half hour to 45 minutes. I tried shh/pat for naps but because she's not sleeping well at night it turned into a mess because she wasn't napping then either so i decided to wait until we get better at nights first. I do hold her for some of her naps just so she gets one quality nap a day. Otherwise she's a mess come evening.

She does fall asleep on her own at bedtime, with a pacifier and some gentle patting. 

I've been thinking she's teething for the last two months! So I don't think that's actually the case.

I'm sure this sounds like a mess but I've just recently started baby whisperer. We went though colic, reflux and milk protein intolerance as well as being a needy baby, so it's been a long road that I was just trying to cope!

[Kellyjs]

Sounds like you've done just fine, don't worry!  . I think a little tweak here and there will help though.

Can I ask if it's easier to get her down for the first nap of the day rather than the others? I'm presuming it gets more difficult later on in the day?

If you can, let's work on independent sleep. Even if it is just for the first nap of the day. I think you'll have more success with that one as the A time looks ok given the longer nap.

With the others, I think the A time is too short. She's doing 2hrs 15mins first A, I think I'd look at extending the second one to this also for now. While I'm here that's fine about the 8am feeding. I think eventually once that 4am feeding phases out, you'll be able to feed on wu. Ideally we just like a little A between the E and S, just like you're doing so that's fine.

Wrt the mornings, I do think that first A will need to be extended soon, but if you're happy to keep with that for awhile and we can always tackle that after the holidays as you said. One thing at a time eh?

The last nap is fine, we'd only really want a short one there anyway. It might disappear with extending the A times in time and also if we finally get a decent nap in for the second one.

Do you fancy revisiting ssh/pat rather than rocking her? At least for the first nap of the day. Wdyt? Xx

Average A times- BOOKMARK ME!

[Lindsam1004]

I think I can definitely work on shh pat for the first nap and try to get her to sleep on her own. I will start that this weekend. I can extend her A time during the day to 2 hr and 15 min.
The last few days she has been waking at 5:45 and throwing everything off. Does bedtime need to be earlier? How do I fix the earlier wake up?
Would being OT or UT make her not able to transition through the first sleep cycle at nighttime? I'm still at a loss as to why she wakes up either 45 min or 1 1/2 hr into nighttime sleep and can't get herself back without the pacifier and patting. Now last night she woke up after 45 min and would not go back to sleep desire trying everything until 11:30 and we had to resort to putting her back in our room. I needed some sleep! How come some night she does so well and others she refuses to go back down? I'm so confused!

[Kellyjs]

It's a difficult one once they start EW but try and keep her in bed as long as you can. If she's getting upset, stay in the room and treat as a NW. Then once you hit a time you're happy with, or as close as you can, walk out the room and make a big song and dance about the fact it's morning. Having the down time in bed without stimulation helps when trying to extend that first A. Then I'd actually start the A time from get out of bed time as your A time is quite short. She may show you horrendous sleepy cues, but doing something low-key or even a change in scenery will help.

Yes actually I'd bring BT earlier when she's short napping for the rest of the day. A too long of an A time to BT after a short nap would most definitely be causing the first OT NW. Can you see you have 2hrs 45mins last A after a 30mins nap? Ideally a 6.5mo should be having say around 2 x 1.5hr naps (obviously this isn't for all bubbas but gives us a starting point) and maybe a 12 or 12.5hr day. Atm you've got closer to a 12.5hr day with only one decent nap, so I might bring BT as early as 6.30pm if that other afternoon nap keep being silly whilst we're working on the first nap. Wdyt? Xx

[Lindsam1004]

So we have done really well with extending then EW to get it back to 6:45-7ish, which is great! Now the problem is that the last 4 nights she's been impossible to get down.  She was doing great falling asleep between 7:30 and 7:45 on her own. Now she might go down but wakes up after 30 min and wants nothing to do sleeping. We can eventually get her down around 8:45-9 but there's lots of screaming and tears.   I don't know what happened. She has been taking longer naps with an extended A so now she naps for 2 1/2 hours in the morning and then and hour and a half - 2 hours then a 30 min cat nap. Her normal bedtime is 2 hr 45 min after that cat nap. Is she not tired yet? Too much daytime sleep? Is she ready to drop the 3rd nap? I'm scared that she's going to get used to going to sleep so late now.

[Kellyjs]

Yes, 100% I think she's ready to drop that CN. Especially now the naps are longer. I'm thinking at this age to fit in those naps including the CN you'd be getting into a 14hr day maybe more to get it all in. Obviously not ideal.

Do you want to post what yesterday looked like for me and we'll see where we can go from there xx