I feel your pain. Cailee is just shy of 6 months and we battled the crate/poop issue. We struggled with the crate at night so I gave up and let her sleep with me. No accidents and I can hear her better when she wants to go during the night. In the past month or so her schedule has changed and she no longer needs to poop during the night and waits till we get up.
However, if we go out to dinner, we were crating her and it always was around the time of the night poop so invaribly she would start to go in the crate (this is a gross subject, I know). So the past couple of times (including last night), we didn't crate her and just confined her to a small area with the pee pad. She used the pee pad so it was a success.
All of this is much earlier than our experience with Cody.
Good luck
