Help - sleep or lack of...

[cat81]

Hi ladies,

Looking for some advice about my ebf 5 month old's sleep patterns. Jack has never been a great sleeper. He refused to sleep anywhere other than in my arms for the first few months so we went with that and co-slept with him in the bed with me until about 4 months when I was able to get him to sleep in his own cot.

He has always woken frequently for night feeds but has gone through stages of sleeping longer periods (about 5 hours) and only waking a couple of times a night. This coincided with him starting to sleep in his cot.

We have now managed to get him to settle well at bed time. I bath him, feed him downstairs, read him a story with my toddler then take him into our room, put him in his sleeping bag, say night night and pop him in the cot awake. He soothes himself to sleep with minimal fuss. Sounds good so far!

The problem is that he then wakes up roughly every 2 hours (sometimes more, sometimes less) throughout the night. When he wakes, he wants to feed and won't settle without being offered the breast. He then feeds back to sleep and goes down in his cot more or less asleep.

Last night, he went down at 7. Woke at 9 and fed back to sleep. Then woke again just after 10. I tried to sooth him back to sleep without offering the breast but after an hour, he was getting increasingly upset so I gave in and fed him.

I haven't yet started any solids and don't get me wrong, I am not bothered about completely cutting out the night feedings. (I quite enjoy one or two). However, these hour / 2 hourly wake ups are slowly killing me. Especially as I have a 3 year old as well.

Any advice would be very gratefully received. Do I just ride this out and hope it will end soon? I initially thought this was the 4 month sleep regression and would sort itself out but it has been well over a month now. Or should I be starting to ration his night feedings, offer a bottle of ebm or water to see if he's really hungry?

Please don't suggest that we go back to co-sleeping. Although this worked very well for us for the first few months, my husband and I wanted our bed back and I was getting terrible back and neck pain from sleeping in awkward positions. We worked hard to get Jack into his cot and don't want to go back on this. I do sometimes bring him in with us if he wakes about 5am but I don't want to go back to sharing my bed with him all night.

Has anyone successfully dealt with this problem?
Thanks in advance.

 

[supertabby]

Can't offer much advice but I know what you're going through.

We didn't have a sleep regression at 4 months, but instead got one at 5 months and sounds the same as what you're going through. She'd be up 5 to 10 times a night.

In our case we rode it out - unfortunately it lasted 2 months! I offered feeds at each waking and held her till she went back to sleep. Sometimes I'd bring her into bed about 5am like you're doing now.

 

[J22]

Hi,

My dd is now 8 months old and we hit a sleep regression at 4 months & 1 week old that lasted for 7 weeks. I was up every 1 or 2 hours every single night throughout that period and it killed me. I couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel at the time but it does pass. Stick with it mama, you'll get there and things will get better again xx

 

[cat81]

Thank you so much for your replies. It's certainly encouraging to hear that you guys came through it and that eventually he will start sleeping better. I don't want to have to implement some horrible training regime to try and get him to sleep longer but cannot keep doing this forever. I can probably manage another few weeks though if I know there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks again. Xx