Thanks Anna for your advice,
I had been advised to try a few more feeds in the evening to see if that would help so i will give it a go. About the dream feed, i have been trying to go to bed as early as possible (around 9pm) so that i can get some more rest, so a dream feed is hard as she normally goes down for the night at about 8-9pm. If i do go to bed later i do try and give her a feed. Last night i feed her at about 9:30 and the next feed was 4am so that was a really good night (cross fingers it continues).
I struggle to extend feeds to 4hourly as she doesn't sleep for very long in the day and when she wakes she wants to be feed and that can be from 2.5-3hourly after last feed. So normally she would wake, feed, play 1.5hrs, sleep 45 min and wake (i try and resettle her but sometimes it doesn't work) and then i try and hold the feed out for around another 1/2 hour until she is due again. Sometimes i put her back to sleep again before her next feed is due. Maybe though i will try a little harder and give the 4hourly feeds a go.
Its amazing how if they sleep well in the day they sleep well at night. So far today she has had 2 big sleeps and therefore 2 x 4hourly feeds and last night she slept well. Last night before her bed i gave her a bottle of EBM. Maybe this could have also contributed to a better sleep as she got quiet a lot of milk.
She self settles now, i have trouble getting her to sleep in my arms now (which is probably a good thing), so i pop her in her cot and sometimes she may grizzle a little but generally she will go straight to sleep.
I know all about catnapping...my DD is a shocker for it some days! I tend to go play, feed, play, sleep just to stretch her out. Its so hard when they don't sleep in the day though, because you never know if they're crying from hunger or because they're tired!!
If she goes down at 8pm, I would feed her at 4, 6 and then 8, so she should be able to go 10 hours to 6am. Otherwise, try and put her down at 9, and feed her at 5, 7 and then 9, so she can go through to 7am (that's what my MCHN said to me anyway). So the day looks like this: feed at 7am, 10:30, 2pm, 5pm, 7pm, 9pm.
The other thing someone suggested to me was to make sure the first feed of the morning is in a room lit with natural light, so they associate feeding with the day and not with night-time. I think this has definitely helped DD set her body clock better.
Anyway...its all trial and error isn't it? I hope you find a solution soon!
This is just what worked for me and may not suit you... My DD was waking two to three times per night and wanted to be fed back to sleep, she had rarely slept through until then. So I refused to feed her overnight, I made sure we weren't busy during the day and she wasn't sick/teething so I could commit to it. Each time she woke I would put the dummy in her mouth and rock her back to sleep. I also sometimes gave her water incase she was thirsty. It took about three nights and she got the idea and now sleeps 7pm-7am, I still give her a dream feed at 10pm which she still sometimes wakes for. Good luck!
Thanks again everyone,
Last night she fed at 6pm and finally feel asleep at about 8pm. I woke her at 10:30 for a dream feed, she then woke at 2:30am, 5:15am and was awake for the day at about 6:30am. Yep i'm tired.
Anna i am going to try the cluster feeds, cross fingers it works.
kristin, thanks for your advise. i tried to resettle her and give her water one night and she still cried. i think i need to be a little more persistant and not give in after half an hour. its hard in the middle of the night when all you want to do is sleep.
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