waking up too early!

[Sonny]

My daughter is now 6 1/2 months old and has been generally a good sleeper. However, this last couple of weeks she has taken to waking up between 2 and 4.30. If she wakes before 4.30 she will stay awake for about an hour after I put the dummy back in and then she will drift off, sometimes after crying for a bit. However, if it is 4.30 she will stay awake unti her next sleep which is driving me crazy! I am wondering how I can help her to stay asleep for the whole night. Do I do controlled crying and will that help her learn that this is not the time to wake up? I always go in a nd greet her at 6 when she wakes so she knows it is morning and time to get up. She goes to bed at about 8 after having her lsat bottle and is having 3 solid feeds a day. I know I am lucky she sleeps this long, but after having a couple of weeks of sleeping right through till 6 I am having trouble going back to night wakings.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

[Jeanie]

Hi
A couple of things might be contributing to her early morning waking.
1. The dummy. They can be a god send and a right royal pain in the bum - Try to get rid of it.
2. The mornings are getting lighter a lot sooner. Try blackout curtains in her room.
3. She might be hungry. That is a long time for a 6 month old to sleep without a feed. Maybe at 430am she needs a feed and might go back to sleep for longer.

My daughter had a similar pattern and I found doing those things worked. Good luck
:)

[xkwzit]

Hi Sonny
My 6.5 mths old daughter is/(was hopefully) doing the same thing, waking between 2 - 4:30. She also had been sleeping through for about 6 weeks before starting this. We tried a few different things and found that feeding her worked (she was waking hungry). She was fully breast fed at the time and having 5 breast feeds and 3 solid meals a day. Apparently this is quite normal at around the 6 month age, as baby is more easily distracted during feeding, takes on less milk through the day and needs to "catch up" at night. My elder daughter did this too, but she was already waking once at night - she started waking *twice* :eek: .

Because I've started back at work and was having trouble keeping up with the expressed milk, we've started DD #2 on formula. She isn't waking as much now, and when she does its around 5 - 5:30. This also worked with DD #1, who dropped back to waking once at night as soon as we introduced formula for her last feed and was able to be coaxed back to sleep without a night feed once we were at equal breast / formula feeds.

Best of Luck :D