He wakes to feed around every 2 hours at night. Generally he needs to be asleep to go back down during the night. He can now settle himself at the beginning of the night and can be put down awake-this works when he’s not ill most of the time. He is allowed to babble and cry a little on this first settle but when he gets upset we go to him and pick him up to comfort him. Sometimes he will then go down again awake but others he needs to be asleep. His big problem on waking at night is that he scratches his face a lot (he has eczema and we use hydrocortisone) we also put gloves on him.
He itches his face/head during the day when he’s hungry or tired but not when he’s content.

He also ‘needs’ to feed. He’s now on three meals a day – meat for lunch and dinner. He eats well, when he’s not ill or teething, but doesn’t much like drinking water. He doesn’t have bottles or formula milk and is breastfed on demand. He seems to feed less during the day now and tanks up at night, aaagh. He is teething off and on but they haven’t come through yet. We would like him to sleep through the night without needing to feed so frequently. We’d like him to be able to settle himself even when he is scratching.

Dear Melissa – Thank you most of all for getting all of us to catch up on our sleep and have grown up evenings. It’s such a lovely change for the better.(Elena from London)