5 month old REALLY light sleeper..wakes every 2 hrs

[MaeBee]

my 5 month old boy has never been a great sleeper, but he seems to have got worse over the last few weeks. he sleeps next to my bed, and wakes every 2 hrs.i usually bring him in with me about 3ish, and that usually keeps him asleep til 5.30, or 6 on a good un, but last night NOTHING seemed to help, spent whole night sssshing him every 10 minutes after he woke screaming for 2 hrs at 12. GRRRR.
am thinking i should move him to his own room, cos maybe me being here is keeping him awake, but im dreading having to get out of bed every 10minutes to pick him up and sssh him....is this a mistake? should i carry on co-sleeping with him?
i dont expect him to sleep through the night, just waking once or twice, or going a 4 or 5 hr stretch, that would be enough!!
funnily enough, he insists on going to bed around 6, and usually goes down ok. its the waking in the night which is the problem.
oh well, glass of shiraz before my 8pm sleep!!

Are you bfeeding him?

yes, but its not always for a feed he wakes up for. sometimes, but just as often he wants to be ssshed and rocked back to sleep.

DS started doind exactly the same at about 4 months (now 5 months and improving slowly). Could be any number of reasons - growth spurt, teeth - but it seems to be pretty common. There's a whole thread on this in the Sleep section called Sleep is for the Weak if you need a bit of support!

Maebee - at 5mo he is very young. I would go with the flow and carry on co-sleeping. You won't be disturbing him and if he wakes in the night for a cuddle give look on it as being a big thumbs up from him to you for being a great mum.

in the middle of the night i always feel so full of anger and weariness that i think it will never improve and i have to go down the dreaded controlled crying route....by late morning and two large cups of tea i feel ok to carry on like this!
did other peoples babies just improve on their own??
mine used to NEVER let me put him down for even a few seconds in the first 2 to 3 months, and he did just get better at it, despite people telling me i had to teach him, so logically i think he will learn to sleep better too. but i worry that he is also not getting enough sleep, and thats why he's such a highly strung baby!
i keep reading that if they dont sleep well by 6 months its really, really hard to teach them...at the same time i hear that sleep training before 6 months can be really damaging, and i dont want to undo the relationship of trust we have been building up.
i was on "sleep is for the weak" and it got full up of messages; think its too big to add to. but it was supportive.
now, by dp is out walking my ds in his buggy (which now makes him sleep...it used to just make him scream!) and i have music on loud and am actually enjoying doing the washing up and hanging out the laundry!! how times change!

OK I really hope this helps. My DS is now 11 months and has never been a good sleeper. I work full-time (and have done since he was seven months) and had been struggling to deal with it. My DP and I live in a one bedroom, open plan warehouse (fab when you're a couple but not great with kids). Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we decided to drag our matress into the living room and let DS have our room to himself. He now sleeps for 11-12 hours a night. It seems we were waking him and, because we turned the small light off when we came to bed, when he woke up and it was dark, this scared him and woke him up more. We're moving house to a bigger place in a couple of months and am over the moon DS will get his own room, which will be brilliant fo us all.

that excites me! we are planning to move him in april, and he has a cot in his own room all waiting, so we shall see how that goes. i dont mind if he starts the night in his room, and ends up in ours, or whatever combination, but i am quietly optimistic it will help. we are a bit afraid to do it now, cos our house is cold and draughty, so would rather it was a bit warmer!
good luck with moving house!

Strongly recommend the book 'healthy sleep habits, happy children.' While I don't agree with all of it, it offers a tremendously valuable way to think about sleep and good suggestions on how to troubleshoot and get at the root causes of challenging behavior.