need advice about settling 6 month old back to sleep

[sclub8]

Hi there, I'm a first time mum with a six and a half month year old baby boy called Connor. We have not had many unbroken nights sleep, maybe 3 or 4. We have just recently taken away his dummy (2 weeks ago - reason being that I had become a dummy slave!!!) and to start with we were just trying to pat him and sshh him back to sleep. However, baby and me got a stomach bug so I started rocking him. Other factors, such as my partner and I not being able to leave him to cry without picking him up sometimes and we also think he is still hungry sometimes therefore we give him a bottle, mean that we don't have a consistent approach to settling him when he wakes in middle of night. He settles beautifully at 7 as we have a great routine. Then he can either wake a couple of times and be succesfully settled quickly or like last night he slept from 7 till 4 then was crying of and on for over an hour before I gave him a bottle which he finished before settling a wee while after this. We also think he might be teething sometimes but he never really cries during the day much. His worst time is between 3 and 5 and the length of time he is taking to settle is getting longer!! Can anyone give me some advice please??? Thanks.

[Maddy's Mum]

Hi there - when Mads was around this age, when she woke in the night, I would first try and comfort her in the cot, but shushing and putting my hand on her back, tucking her in again - but if she wouldn't settle that way, then PU/PD helps them back off to dreamland.

Have you tried PU/PD? Do you have any of Tracy's books? If not we can talk you through what to do with PU/PD

Dee
x

[sclub8]

hi there, yes i have the baby whisperer and am aware of the pu/pd method. What seems to be the pattern at the moment is that he is easy to settle if he wakes before 3/4 am. But regardless of how much sleep he has had during the day he wakes around 3/4 am and totally wakes up and wants to chat and play for between a half hour and an hour before he gets distressed as he cannot get himself back to sleep. We have given him a bottle regularly now and he finishes it. He either goes down quickly or he is crying hard for a period of time. We can pick him up but som of the time unless we rock him it doesn't seem to comfort him, sometimes I even think it makes things worse. But other times he quietens down straight away and we can then do the pu/pd method to good effect. As we don't manage to seem to settle him the same way each night it doesn't seem to have the effect of him learning to self soothe. I really don't want to do controlled crying but i'm also not wanting to be up every night for 1-2 hours. What do you think i should do, if anything different from the status quo?

[newaussie]

Is it possible he still needs one bottle at night?  I have an 8 month old who still has a bottle at night.  I'm planning to cut that out soon but if your LO is sleeping 7 till 4 then it sounds like he is generally a good sleeper.  If he goes back to sleep quickly then it might not be such a big problem.  Perhaps you could try cutting back the feeds gradually instead.  At the moment we have had a few nights where our LO sleeps 7-7 or 8-7 or 9-7 but lately she's been getting a bottle at 10:00pm and then sleeps till 7:00am.  That works quite well for us although I would like to get her out of that last bottle.

[sclub8]

Thanks for your reply, you may be quite right as he seems to be very hungry at the moment. I'm going to increase his bottles through the day also to see if that makes a difference to the wakings. I think it's good to get positive feedback about the fact he is really an ok sleeper as I think i'm getting a bit obsessed with the 'holy grail' of the sleeping through the night that everyone elses baby that i know ( i think a lot of them exaggerate tho!!). I'll maybe go back to waking him at 10pm and see what happens...Cheers.