How to break habit of waking at night?

Question

My 7 month old daughter wakes up every night usually around 3:30 am. Very occasionally she will sleep through the night ( a few weeks ago she did 9 pm-8 am! 🤗). When she wakes, I have to change and feed her to get her back to sleep. She usually eats and is right back to bed although rarely it takes an hour or more to get her back to sleep. I don’t think she’s waking because she’s hungry at this point but more out of habit. She usually goes to sleep around 7:30-8 and will wake around 3:30 am. If we are out and she goes to bed later, 9:00-10 she will still wake at 3:30. How do I break this habit and get her to sleep through the night? I am definitely not complaining as she is a great sleeper but if she can sleep through the night, I wouldn’t mind that at all! 😄

Answer

So my daughter (also 7 months) went from this to waking every 1-2 hours to snuggle and nurse. After having started sleeping through the night more and more! It was horrible. I was so sleep deprived.
What we did might not work for everyone, but it did for us. We have a habit of putting a 10 minute timer on for her naps/falling asleep. If she’s still crying at 10 minutes, we go help. If not, we see if she will fall asleep on her own.
So... my husband and I made a plan. HE would be the one to respond at night. I actually even slept in a different room. I knew she didn’t need to eat and only wanted to. I said if she needed to eat, I was happy to feed her after 4 AM. He set the timer every time. The first night, he had to bouncer her a bit every time. The second night she put herself to sleep (but still woke 6 Times) and after that she has woken fewer times and is sleeping through from 7PM-6AM. It wasn’t as hard as I was expecting, so I think she must have been ready.
If I had been the one responding, you better believe she would have “needed” to nurse. But because it was him, it was ok. She knew someone was there for her and she wasn’t alone, but she was ok without nursing.
I’m not saying this will work for everyone. We had set up a lot of stuff that helped it work for us when it was time well in advance out of habit. And I’m not saying to just let your child scream! If my baby is really upset, I know and I won’t let her cry long at all, but a little fussing is ok and a little crying is ok for us.

Answer

Well first off you need to get that bedtime under control. They’re not going to settle into a routine and good sleep habits if their bedtime is constantly changing. Our daughter has gone to bed at 8pm every single night since she was born. She’s now 6 months. We haven’t missed a single night. We started a solid bedtime routine right from day one and that too has never changed. They need consistency. As for sleeping through, we had our daughter sleeping 10 hours straight (8pm to 6am) by the time she was 5 weeks old. She has nights here and there where she’ll be a little restless in the middle of the night but it’s not often and we continue with the consistency. She never gets a middle of the night bottle or a middle of the night diaper change. I leave her right in her crib, hand her a paci and rub her head of back until she passes back out. I agree that your little one is waking out of habit at this point and not because they’re hungry. So I’d just drop the bottle altogether and stick with it.

Answer

Mine wakes around then too, but doesn’t really cry. We have a rule that if he isn’t crying, we don’t get up. He kinda grunts and whines for a bit or does a weak cry and we just stay in bed until he either starts actually crying or he goes back to sleep. If he does cry, I feed him and change his diaper with his room as dark as I can manage and lay him back down once he’s done eating.

Answer

I would agree it is habit. I would start by offering less ounces instead of just stopping it all together. Every few times it happens offer less and less and soon she’ll get used to knowing that time is not for eating and just sleeping. Being consistent helps obviously but one night here and there of a bedtime changing isn’t going to kill a child’s night time sleep. I have two kids and we have always done bedtime routines and times the same as long as were home but if we have a family thing to do things happen! I just get her down to bed with her same routine at the time we get home. I would just make sure to stay consistent in breaking it for a week and keeping the same bedtime and things should be fine by there.

Answer

I’d say to try a pacifier if you’re not already. My LO is 6 months old. He’s been sleeping through the night since he was 3 weeks old. Only time since then that he’s has a middle of the night bottle was during a cold because he was actually hungry since he didn’t eat well through the day. He sometimes does have a night here and there when he’s more restless but I go in give him his pacifier and he goes right back to sleep. Make sure not to turn lights on too. The only bad thing about the pacifier is they do become dependent on it. But if it helps get her to sleep through the night without having to get her up it might be worth a shot.

How to break habit of waking at night?

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