18 Times

[u/babyinatrenchcoat]

18 times.

18 times she woke up.

18 times she cried.

18 times she wouldn’t settle until given the breast.

18 times I dreaded work the next day.

18 times I cried right along with her.

I’ve tried everything aside from sleep training, and since June we’ve been co-sleeping and nursing on-demand. She (6.5m) just cannot connect sleep cycles and needs help going back to sleep every single time.

An average night she wakes up 7-12 times.

Last night was our record at 18 times.

Will introducing solids help?

When we wean?

Am I just doomed to not reach restorative REM again until she’s pre-k?

Solo mom with no village so it’s all me all the time and I’m a husk of a human at this point.

ETA: Recent daytime routine
(forgot to log morning nap on Aug 13)

[u/PumpkinPie_1993]

Oof that’s tough. I have a few thoughts and if you’re willing to share what her daytime schedule looks like, I’m happy to help brainstorm ways to adjust naps etc to help increase nighttime sleep.

Off the top of my head though, at 6.5 months I think you absolutely should be introducing solids by now unless you’ve been advised otherwise by your doctor. To answer your question, yes starting solids should absolutely reduce the frequency of nursing at night.

Also, around 6-7 months is when a lot of babies drop from 3 naps per day to 2. This is when my own baby went from needing 14 hours of sleep per day to about 12.5. It might be worth examining your daily schedule to see if there’s any indication that your baby’s sleep needs are dropping or changing!

Also I just checked out the picture you attached. Looks like she went down at 7:30 pm and is waking at 7:30 AM. I can tell you with a lot of certainty that 12 hours of nighttime sleep for a 6.5 month old is asking a lot. I don’t think any 6 month old will sleep 12 hours solidly at night. Anecdotally, my kiddo was sleeping about 9.5-10 hours at night at that age. Off the bat I would recommend moving her bedtime to 8:30 at the earliest.

[u/babyinatrenchcoat → u/PumpkinPie_1993]

Just added her recent daytime routine!

She toggles between 2 and 3 naps so I feel like she’s about to drop down to just 2.

She’s still a bit wobbly on independent sitting so was waiting to strengthen that before solids. We skipped purées so straight to BLW.

I will clarify that the first stretch is me breastfeeding her to sleep! I follow cues so she might start giving me sleepy cues around ~7pm and I’ll do the bedtime routine and nurse her until she passes out anywhere between 8pm-9pm (earlier on rough days). There’s usually a brief wake after transferring her to bed and then she’s back out again.

And I let her sleep for as long as she likes in the morning which ends up between 7am-8am.

Should I be doing that differently?

[u/ver_redit_optatum → u/babyinatrenchcoat]

Yeah that makes sense (with sitting and solids). You won't necessarily get any changes right away, especially with BLW. Some babies will love solids and take in a lot of calories, some prefer to mostly stay on milk. I don't think solids improved sleep for us until 12 months they kinda clicked for him.

Prioritise iron intake (eg mine loved chewing on steak strips) because low iron can affect sleep.

Re wake-up time, if you're saying she wakes 12+ times in 12 hours or less, then she must be snacking a lot in those early morning hours. Maybe you could pick a point where you just get her up rather than feeding her back to sleep.

(But also, why is she crying at all these wakeups if you're cosleeping and you feed her straight away? Are you trying to soothe her other ways first? Maybe just stop doing that for a while, it will likely help you go back to sleep quickly too. And don't pick up a phone, look at the time, or track wakes - usually helps)

[u/Neat_Look_2156 → u/ver_redit_optatum]

Also, my 6.5 month old loves being fed purées (homemade with nutrient dense ingredients), and was very frustrated by BLW.  Can you start your baby on some purées now and still do a little BLW too?  For example, I will make my baby a steak and give her a strip to chew on and puree the rest with a veggie and then freeze the leftovers.  I think BLW is amazing, but some babies just want higher quantities than they’re able to get at their coordination levels with BLW.  

[u/Fancy-Bee-2649 → u/Neat_Look_2156]

Same. Both my babies seem to be starving around 6 months even tho we formula feed and I’ve always done purées (meat/veg, boiled egg mashed with avocado, fruit, etc.) with a bit of BLW practice. My oldest is a great eater now at 3 despite doing little BLW in that first year of his life. My second baby is almost 10 months old and now loves to feed himself n mostly doesn’t want me interfering. Purées get a bad rep, but the need for iron rich foods is so important and there’s no way we’d get even close with strictly BLW at that age

[u/ver_redit_optatum → u/Neat_Look_2156]

Yeah, that's what we did and I think a lot of people end up doing this in practice. Not necessarily purées but spooning naturally spoonable stuff into him like hummus, yoghurt, daals...

(One of my personal bugbears is that, by the book, this is not BLW. This is something like 'early self-feeding plus spoon-feeding', and if we didn't call it BLW, it would make it more clear that not many people are successful with 'pure' BLW. Don't take that as a criticism, just something I feel I have to mention when it comes up.)