Sudden clingy nighttime BF'ing Baby!!

katybug499

All I can say is, thank goodness I'm on vacation from work...but that's ending in a week and I know I won't be able to keep this up!

 My 6 month old has very suddenly (in the last 5 or 6 days or so) decided that she can't sleep next to me without nursing for hours on end and she can't sleep anywhere else at night *except* next to me.  We were co-sleeping out of necessity for the one or two times a night she would wake up to eat so that I wouldn't have to get up to do it and wouldn't be exhausted for work.  But this last week has been a nightmare!  She will go to sleep around 8pm, sleep until about 9:30 and wake up like she's starving!  If I try to wait her out to see if she's just fussing, she will start to freak out and panic-cry.  BF'ing calms her and she acts like she's starving...then she'll fall asleep...for about 20 minutes.  This cycle continues until about 12:30-1:00AM (about the time I'm starting to beg for her to just go to sleep already!) and then she'll finally, blissfully, go to sleep until about 5AM. 

Last night we tried putting her in her crib instead of our bed (she does nap in her crib so she knows that it's a place for sleeping) with disastrous results...her timeline was the same as if she were sleeping next to me...except she was about 10x more pissed off than when she's next to me when she kept waking up.

Could she possibly be really hungry all night?  Is this a phase or becoming a habit?  I'm worried that she isn't hungry and by soothing her by nursing (and believe me...nothing else works...not a paci, not swaddling, not rocking, not shushing, nothing.) I'm hindering her ability to self-soothe or teaching her to soothe with food (can you do that to a 6 month old??)

I'm sorry if this is long and a bit disjointed...I'm tired... lol

Any help is appreciated!