My 7 month old daughter was sleeping through the night for around 4 weeks, suddenly she is waking 2-3 times a night and no matter how long we leave her for she gets more and more worked up, and I end up rocking or trying to feed her back to sleep.

She sleeps in a sleeping bag and is having 3 meals a day of the Big jars stage 2 food from the super market. She is a great eater, and has 4 breastfeeds a day.

Her naps are ok, around 40-60 minutes 3 times a day, and I am aiming to have her asleep by 7pm after a good bed time routine.

Why has she regressed so much?

Answer

At 7 months your baby is probably going through a large number of developmental changes, she is on the cusp of only needing 2 naps a day, she is probably starting to roll both ways around the floor and in her cot, and she is now eating solid food 3 times a day. These changes are both physical, and neurological, and it is important that we take these into consideration here.

The introduction of solid food rapidly changes the gut flora for babies which can cause a few upsets and disrupted nights, this alone is how ever probably not the main contributor to your night disturbances.

Your little girl if eating 3 meals a day easily and having 4 good breast feeds if probably hungry, she might even be having a growth spurt. I would consider trying to increase the portion of her meals which are home made rather than store bought as this will increase her protein and carbohydrate content in her food, which in term will help stabilise her blood glucose levels over night, and she won’t need as many feeds to settle.

If she has just learnt to roll, this is a huge developmental leap, she wants to practise this skill, and she will get tired and frustrated on her tummy at times and call out for you to respond. Respond for a few days at least by helping her roll back over so she learns to do this herself. She might also benefit from you working on teaching her to roll more confidently during play time, this will create muscle memory and she will settle faster at night.

I suspect due to her short naps she is also going to bed a bit over tired at night, this will not be helping her night sleep. We would need to teach her to consolidate at least one nap of the day past 45 minutes and look at the timing of the other two naps and her bed time. The last thing an over tired baby needs is a late bed time, this is an easy change usually with immediate results.

Over night, I suggest you look to drop her back to 1-2 night feeds, this should be possible once her diet is addressed and she learns to self soothe more consistently again.

This is a great age for her to learn this skill, it is a lot easier to tackle before she starts to stand up!