Please tell me the 6 mo. wakeful period ends...

footnotegirl

Our daughter has been an amazing sleeper (down at 8:30 or 9 every night, up at about 7 every morning) since early May, barring special circumstances (the week she had a cough, the convention we went to).

Until this week.

Wednesday night, she went down normally if a little late (9:30) and slept until midnight, at which point she started crying/yelping in her sleep every 45 minutes and not stopping when we went in to comfort her (she occasionally did this before, but would always settle down immediately if one of us just went in and put a hand on her stomach or forehead). She seemed a little congested, so we took her to the bathroom and ran a hot shower to steam up the room. She went back to sleep for about an hour and a half and then started up again. 

Immediately upon going to daycare, she took a solid 4 hour nap. 

Last night, she really didn't want to go down, it was 10 before she fell asleep. And then she woke up at 3:30 coughing, dad nosefridaed her, and then she did a lot of the 'crying while asleep' thing. 4 a.m. was the start of my 'shift' (we'd decided to trade off 2 hour responsibility shifts through the night so that we'd each get uninterrupted blocks of sleep at least) and at 4:05, she started babbling. I went in to check on her, and she was all giggles and bounces. 

For an hour and a half. She would not go back to sleep. I tried giving her a bottle.. no go. 5:45 I finally get her back down (yeahp, just as my shift was ending). She slept until 7:30. 

So tired. I realize that this is 'normal' for many people, that we won the baby sweepstakes by having such a usually great sleeper, but holy hannah, please let this go back to normal soooooon.

vszapp

We have been going through something very similar for a few weeks. I don't really have any advice, but I can say that for us it seems to come and go. Last night she slept for 11 hours with only one brief waking to eat (and she went right back down!!). I think there is just so much going on developmentally now, plus teething, that they really have a hard time sleeping. Someone suggested to me that there may be some separation anxiety kicking in, too, which for us sounded plausible. 

Jen0204

Are you sure it's not a cold?  With the congestion it sounds more like that then a wakeful period.  Do you have a humidifier that you can run in there?  Maybe you can put some blankets under the mattress to make it inclined a bit?

Mine went through about 2 weeks of waking up a lot.  It sucked a lot.  Now they're just up 2-3 times a night, which is still worse then the once a night they've been doing since about 3.5 months, but better then the 5-6 times a night they were doing for those couple of weeks.

buddrfly421

We had a similar struggle around 6 months, lasted a week or 2 I'd say...but it seems to be picking right back up at 8 months!

EvenAngelsFall

If she had a cold, could she now have an ear infection?

One of DS's symptoms is always discomfort while lying down. He's had 2 ear infections and this was the ONLY symptom both times - not even a fever.

Good luck!

MollySm

Lucia started waking up every half hour starting at 4 or 4:30 . We tried feeding her, but that didn't help. I read Healthy Sleep Habits, which said that around this age they start to really understand that we are coming in, and wanting us to come play. So our putting the paci back in was encouraging her to wake up to see us. We stopped going back in. The first night she yelled a bit, then went back to sleep. Since then (for the oast 4 nights) she has for the most part stopped waking up. She will occasionally whine for a second around that time, but if you look at her on the monitor she doesn't look awake, and it only lasts a second.

JWSchwarz

I've heard of a 4 month wakeful, but not a 6 month. Maybe she is getting sick or an ear infection?