Help me make my 8mo sleep better

[BlueHat]

my 8 mo has never slept through.

From three months ish he was sleeping from 7pm to about 4am, would breastfeed, then would go straight back to sleep til about 7am. This continued til about 6mo, and I was quite happy with that and felt sure that soon he would be able to go without the 4am feed.

Since 6mo his sleep has got worse. He can be up wanting to be fed two times instead of one, despite starting solids and some formula. He is now 20lbs abd am damn sure he is physically capable of holding the calories to sleep through. He doesn't settle back to sleep well anymore and cries as soon as he's put in his cot. He has started to do this at 7pm bedtime as well.

I can't leave him to cry at all, because he shares a room with his older brother who is at school and I don't want his sleep disturbed.

I am back at work in a month, it's long hours and I really need more sleep than I am getting now. I don't
know what I'm doing wrong, my eldest slept from 7-7 at three months old on nothing but breast milk.

Any help?

[HearMyRoar]

If this has started since you started weaning could it be a reaction to something he is eating?

DD is 8 months and over the last month we had started introducing more dairy into her diet (yoghurt, cheese, etc) and found her sleep getting more and more unsettled with lot of crying. I cut out dairy and 4 days latter she is sleeping much better again.

Also could he be teething and comfort feeding?

[Iggly]

Yes I reckon there could be some sort of mild food tolerance there. It's a common cause of poor sleep in babies and toddlers. Dairy (cows milk is the culprit usually)...