10 months – too young to sleep through?

FROM: Veronika
CATEGORY: Sleep
SUBJECT: 10 months – too young to sleep through?

I have a 10 month old boy. He tends to sleep 'through' until about 5:30-6:00 am when he wakes up for a feed (he is breastfed). He will then sleep until about 7:30am. He goes to bed at 7pm without any problems.

However, recently he has started waking in the middle of the night, numurous times, and only a feed would settle him. He can settle himself as he is usually awake when put down for a sleep and sometimes wakes briefly and then goes back to sleep.

So I am wondering:
Is he waking up, obviously not knowing what time it is, and expecting a feed because he associates waking up with feeding?
Or is he simply too young (and also because he is breast fed) to go through till 7am without a feed? He does eat a lot of solid food throughout the day though.

We have used the controlled crying technique successfully before so I was wondering whether to try and use this so he will sleep through until he is ready to wake up for the day (which he clearly isn't at 6am as he falls straight back to sleep when put back in his cot)
Any advice would be much appreciated!

Hi Veronika,

Well done, your questions are spot-on! He is now waking up in the middle of the night, hoping to get what he gets at 6am and that's a quick feed and then to go back to sleep. Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with him having that 6am feed and then going back down to sleep until 7:30am.

However, I would cut out the bad habit of the feeding during the night. He's just simply starting a habit you don't want to reinforce. As you have already successfully used my control-crying technique, I would suggest you do it again and know that this is around the time (age-wise) that you normally have to reintroduce the technique.

Good to see you doing so well!
xJo

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