A raisingkids.co.uk member's daughter is having trouble sleeping through the night, despite having a good night-time routine. Guest expert and super nanny Elaine Addison, offers some ideas to help her to sleep straight through.

Raisingkids Member's Question
My daughter is now 20 weeks, she is taking 3 meals a day and around 25 ounces of milk. She has a good night time routine of a bath, then bottle in a darkened room then goes in her cot awake and settles of to sleep with minimal assistance at 7pm. However she will only sleep until 4am, when she takes around 6oz and stays awake for a good hour. We have tried waking her and feeding her at 11pm, this led to her waking again between 1.30 - 4am still requiring food. In the middle of the night we change her nappy in the dark and don't talk to her. What can we do to get her to sleep through the night?

Miss Poppy's Reply
Wow! I am very impressed with your organised routine. Your daughter sounds like she’s on a pretty good schedule for a 5 month old. This is however a good age to try to break the night time feeding pattern and it will happen with a lot of patience and perseverance.

First and Last
You mentioned that she is eating three full meals per day and drinking 25 oz of milk, which is actually more important than the solid food at this stage. The two feeds that you need her to concentrate upon and drink in full are the early morning breakfast milk feed and the last feed in the evening. She may or may not be taking adequate amounts of milk due to the fact that she’s not very hungry as she’s getting fed during the night, which sustains her appetite. When is her hungriest time of day? Lunchtime perhaps? Or maybe 4 or 5 in the afternoon?

Your aim is to make her quite ravenous in the later evening so she eats and drinks enough to sustain her through the night. If she is eating more at lunchtime than at suppertime, cut down on lunch and push suppertime to say 6pm. If she gets grumpy and hungry in between offer her boiled water and a bread crust or a peeled apple to suck on which will keep her occupied.

Wide Awake
Once you have established a good suppertime and she is emptying her last bottle, you can begin to offer her boiled water to drink when she wakes during the night. She probably won't take kindly to this and create a fuss no doubt but try to settle her back to sleep the first few nights. If you manage this she may start waking up at 6am ravenous for her milk, which you must of course give to her establishing a good breakfast feed which will set her up for the day.

Settling Down
After a few days of calming her to sleep you can begin to place her back in her cot to learn how to settle herself back to sleep. This will be painful for all of you at first but be reassured that she is now taking adequate amounts of solids and milk to see her through the night.

Begin by letting her cry for at least 5-8 minutes. Re-enter the room and gently soothe her by stroking her and ushering Ssh! But do not pick her up. Once again leave the room but for a little bit longer say12-15 minutes and if she is still crying after this enter her room and repeat the same process. Gradually build up the time you leave her to cry for a little bit longer each time. I know this can be traumatic and painful for both of you but it does work and you will see results within the first week. But you must be brave and consistent. Just try to remember that you are teaching her good sleeping habits, which will serve her and you well in the future.

• Read All Miss Poppy's Answers Here