your average night with a 6 month old?!

[bee74]

My little girl has had reflux since birth and nights have been horrendous with, at the moment, still not much improvement.

For the life of me, I just cannot remember how nights were with my son (maybe it is a defence mechanism which kicks in once you start thinking of having another...)

So I wonder what other people's nights are/were like with a 6 month old to get a sense of what is normal and what i should aim for / apire to once she gets a bit better...

Thank you

[Pickle]

By 6 months with all 3 children we have been at the stage where they are in bed by 7pm, having one feed at my bedtime, then sleeping until 7am. Littlest Pickle is 4.5 months and reliably does this (up until a month or so ago she was having one feed in the night, somewhere around 5-6am, then going back to sleep).

Not sure whether this is "normal", but it seems to be where my babies are concerned :). I hope things improve for you soon x

[bee74]

oh, i hate you Pickle ;-)

how about day naps?

[Pickle]

:-$ sorry

Day naps... Child 1 was still having 3 naps a day at 6 months (short ones around 9 and 4, long one at lunchtime). Child 2 one long one at lunchtime but a bit erratic at other times. My baby is taking after her brother (thankfully) and currently naps at 9, 12 and 4pm which fits in nicely with the school runs.

I followed a routine with #1, which has meant for us it is logical to just do the same with the others.

[snowboarder]

As a story of encouragement I remember 6m with my younger son as being really the worst time!! He had no reflux issues but was cosleeping with me and would wake loads in the evening and night - I remember specifically as we went on a weeks holiday with my parents and most nights having gone to bed after 7ish feed he would wake during dinner around 9ish, then 11ish when I went to bed, and then throughout the night - I just fed him back to sleep each time. At 7m we changed tack rather and stopped feeding to sleep and put him in his own room and he improved dramatically. Naps were chaotic at 6m - usually 3 and for at least 45m but mostly on the move. The new 'regime' at 7m also (to help with meal times and weaning partly too) meant moving to 2 naps - longer and better.

I think 6m was def a 'crunch' time for us - he was too alert and wakeful for all the tactics that had helped as a younger baby but not ready not to feed to sleep etc. I do kid of think it takes both of you to change things (with older son I continued as above and he continued to constantly wake) but only you will know when that time is right. Good luck - I remember the tiredness v well.

[Helen GV]

Hello b, to be honest I can't remember. BUT def not sleeping through, still not at 21 months. I love my little girl to pieces and hate to say anything negative but she has cried a lot since birth as well. I take comfort from the fact that my little boy, nearly four now, has been sleeping through fairly well since about two and a half. Perspective helps a lot!

[Belle]

My son's a bit older - 8 m ths, same reflux issues as you know. Things are def getting slowly better. But they were awful at about 5/6 mths. He still has nights where he will 'only' do 3 hour stretches (this still seems like a huge improvement on 40 minutes!) and wake 3/4 times in a night, but we've had a fair few nights of only 1 wake in the last month or two. When things got awful at 5 mths (waking every 20 mins was my absolute breaking point) I did a v gentle sleep training, as I knew he wasn't hungry or in pain any more, with the reflux being well managed. This helped a lot though he has yet to sleep through and I do often bring him in, though neither of us sleep well (as in me and baby) when I do. We did have a few nights where he did as Pickle's little ones have done - feed around 11ish then through till say 6ish, which is v civilised but I see those as the 'golden' nights. Too few!

But my first son was sleeping through with an 11pm feed at this age so I guess it just shows how the age itself isn't a guide, it varies so much.

Re naps - as Snowboarder says, switching to 2 naps around weaning helps a bit, though annoyingly my little one is very prone to waking after a 40 min sleep cycle and not going back, so he is pretty unpredictable from one day to the next. Too be honest I am now realising that I was more lucky than organised with my first, as I've tried much the same approach with my second but with very different results. We will all get more sleep soon, I'm sure!

[reneet]

We are 9months now but 6m was terrible. Fed every couple of hrs or an hour so woke up loads. 2 day naps morning 1hr afternoon 2 hrs. Now at 9m wakes up twice at night goes down at 7pm wake up for feed at 11 or 12 then at 3 or 4. Used to it now and hoping he will be sleeping through the night by the time I go back to work.

[sunbob]

Last night was pretty average for our 7 month old. 8-8.30 bedtime bf. 9.15-11pm disturbed, husband mostly rocking/unable to put down. 11.15 small bottle EBM. Put back to bed don't know what time. 2-3am bf. 4am shhing in cot. 5-6am bf. 8.30am up for day (usually 7ish).

Anyone else thoroughly exhausted?!

[bee74]

thanks everyone. It is interesting to see how different all chidlren are as if we needed reminding!

I am hopefull that our nights whicih have been totally exhausting (I feel your pain sunbob) with wakings every 20-40 minutes due to pain, will be over soon once the little girl starts on solids and her reflux is gone.

Then i will try to have some sort of routine like Pickle suggests. Which i had with my son and he is now a wonderful sleeper - although as with Belle it was more luck than organisation. This time, instead, i think i will need to be more organised to teach her to be a good sleeper.

[alieh]

6 months was AWFUL! We finally successfully ditched the dummy around 7.5 months which helped a bit. He settled into a regular 2-3 feeds/night from then to about 12.5 months when he dropped feeds most nights and mostly slept through. And has been pretty good since then (except this week at 15 mos he's started waking up again howling for ages at night...why????).

I think some children are more amenable to sleep "organisation" or training than others. And some children just need less sleep than others. Son #1 needs less sleep than average (grrr) and Son #2 more than average.

Beyond luck, I think people who very systematically leave babies (like waiting 10 minutes or something before going to them when they wake if they're not due a feed, even when very tiny) before rushing to them from a very early age probably learn to self settle and connect sleep cycles faster than others. I could never get the hang of this because I always feared that if I didn't rush to settle them they might be awake for hours.

I just suffered and gradually tried to increase opportunities to self settle (i.e. making sure they went down awake at bedtime, leaving for 5-10 minutes sometimes during naptime if they woke up after one sleep cycle, etc.).

The Weissbluth book called Healthy Sleep Habits Healthy Child is good on understanding "post-colic" (same applies to reflux I think) babies and bad sleep after the age of 4 months (before this he recommends just doing whatever it takes to get baby to sleep) but his prescription - leave them alone to cry if they wake anytime other than 3-hourly feeds overnight - is quite brutal and I couldn't do it personally!

[oimissus]

At 6 months Miss Oi had been sleeping through for a while (sorry!), 7 till 7, with I think 3 daytime naps, long morning, short lunchtime and afternoon. But if she was teething we could be up for quite a while with her. We were quite strict with sleep training, and tried to settle her in her cot if at all possible, lots of shushing and stroking her back. But she didn't have anything like reflux, just teething probs or colds.

[Convex]

we are at 6 1/2 months and the routine has been fairly similar for a couple of months i think.

7pm bed

10pm (ish) bottle

usually wakes around 4am, i feed back to sleep, or if its nearer 5, i bring him into bed

then again around 6am, i bring him into bed with us. then feed on and off until about 7 when his dad gets up with him. i have good intentions of getting up at 7am too to get him into a proper routine but the 45mins extra sleep is sooooo nice.

we have just started on a bedtime milk and he slept through until after 6am! i was delighted! but up at 5am this morning so was sadly short-lived.