7 month old who slept through beautifully is suddenly waking

[newmum2Ellie]

Hi There,

My DD is now 7 months and I have sworn by Baby Whisperer since she was two months old. Within days of doing pu/pd she napped beautifully in the day and, after introducing the dream feed - slept through the night.

She has been waking in the night now and again recently due to teething (now has two bottom teeth) but lately she has started getting into the habit of waking at 2-3am and won't settle until we feed her (in fact she'll gurgle for an hour or so but then she will scream the house down until we give her milk!)

A few weeks ago she wasn't taking much at her dream feed so we decided to drop it. This worked for a couple of nights and she slept through - magic! But then she started waking up so hungry that we had to re-introduce it. Now she's taking a dream feed AND waking at 2-3am for more! Is she going through a growth spurt?

Her routine in the day is as follows (roughly as it's beginning to change a little)...

6-7am - wake, activity

7-8pm - breakfast (4oz formula and a bowl of cereal), activity

8.30/9am -10/10.30 - nap

10-10.30pm - wake, activity

12-12.30pm - lunch (half a small jar of baby food plus 3-4oz formula) I would prefer her to have milk before lunch but struggling to get childminder to implement this!

2.30-3.30 ish - nap

3.30ish, wake, activity

4.30pm - half baby food jar and 3-5oz formula

6.30pm - bath followed by 6oz bottle

7pm - sleep

9.30-10pm - dream feed 6oz bottle


Hope someone can help as I'm back at work and getting v.tired!

Paula xx

[Colin Macs Mom]

Hi Paula! Your DD is adorable!!

It sounds to me like she is waking and wanting the feed out of habit. Have you seen the sticky at the top of this forum called How We Stopped the Night Feeds with a 9 Mo Old?? I would suggest weaning her off the 2-3 am feed and then consider dropping the dreamfeed once that is gone. A dreamfeed can cause wakings once a lo is past 7 mo., but not always, so it's your call on if she needs to keep that or not. Once you start weaning the night feed(s) she should increase her intake during the day. At 7 mo she should be taking more than 3-5oz at a time.

My DS is bottle fed, and we weaned his night feed by doing the water-down method and it only took 4 days! There is hope, I promise.

[newmum2Ellie]

Thank you!

She's not waking EVERY night - it's roughly every other night or so. I think it's related to the amount of food/milk she's had or hasn't had during the day but the difficulty is that I can't feed her any more than I already am. Should I be seperating out her milk and her food a bit more? I've tried doing this for the last couple of days but she still doesn't want to drink that much (even today after sleeping through the night).

Just wondering whether I should be trying to tweak the routine I have a bit more?

Paula x
PS - your little one is scrummy too!

[Colin Macs Mom]

Separating out her solids and formula may help. Many people give about an hour between solids and bottle/breastfeed. Every lo is different though so you might start there and see how that works, and adjust from there if necessary.