Night wakings

So my little 6 month-old girl has gone from sleeping through 12 hours straight a couple of months ago, then waking once a night and now we've escalated to 4-5 wakings every night... It started at 5 months, with the immunisations (which always unsettle her for a week or so), then she had a mild cold, then she developed eczema, and a tooth has also popped up in that time! Poor wee thing but we obviously got into a habit of being up with her during the night....

She is a bit up and down with her food, but generally is having 1/2 a jar/can of food 3 times a day, plus about 5 BF's during the day (although she has greatly reduced how much she's BFing at each feed). I try and avoid feeding her during the night, but usually resort to it once a night.

She is put down sleepy but awake for all her naps and at bedtime, and manages to put herself asleep. Ocasionally during the night, she will put herself back to sleep after a quick cuddle. The issue is that for most of the wakings, she doesn't settle back to sleep easily, and even with feeding her, it can take up to an hour to get her back to sleep.

I'm not totally anti-CIO, but from experience she just gets absolutely hysterical, her nose gets stuffed up from all the crying, and then her eczema gets itchy, and it's even harder to get her to sleep after that.

I guess what I'm wondering is if this is a phase that we just have to ride out, or if anyone has some advice? It's just so frustrating because she does self-settle during the day, but just seems to want cuddles all night long! (which is lovely, but the sleep-deprivation is really starting to kick in! )

It sounds like your little girl has a lot going on at the moment with teething and excema. It may be the heat? I've noticed that my little girl's excema is much worse on the hot days and nights and often wakes her up. Are you using anything to help with the itchiness? We are using QV products (a solution for in the bath and a moisturising lotion for after bath and a cream for itchiness that you can use instread of steriod creams) and find them very helpful.
She may also be waking up because of the teething, maybe a drink of water to rule out thirst and then a bit of bonjela on her gums?

I think I recall (since Im such an old wise Mummy now) that Issy went through a period like that.

In the end we just used to pick her up out of her cot, plonk her in our bed and the whole clan would go back to sleep!

It didnt do her (or us) any harm (although she takes up loads of space for a little person) .. and it was a passing phase .. I relied on the fact that kids dont sleep with Mum and Dad when they are teenagers .. so its something that isnt habit forming.

Although that was the cheats way out .. we could have stayed up for hours and walked, rocked, sshhed .. but just didnt have the energy.

And .. she outgrew it ... and went back to sleeping through after a couple/few weeks (its hard to remember exactly how long, but it wasnt forever)

thanks for your replies.

after numerous GP visits, we seem to have the eczema under control (go the lemnis fatty cream!), and while i'm guessing the heat has something to do with the early evening wakings, because we have a heatpump and DVS running to cool her room down, the temp generally isn't too bad after 10-11pm.

we are also rapidly running out of energy to settle her during the night, so we might be instigating the 3 in the bed routine.

hila - i also have the no cry sleep solution, but for the most part it seems to deal with issues involving self-settling....and it's becoming apparent that while Natalie is quite capable to putting herself to sleep, she just doesn't want to during the night. We have been using some of the ideas in it though (i.e. me not feeding her).

I keep getting *helpful* advice to just let her cry herself back to sleep, but i'm definitely not in the right headspace for that!

i think for now we'll either plonk her into our bed, or try and re-settle her, and just hope that this will pass