My 4.5 month old DD is waking every 2 hours to feed at night. We used to be almost guaranteed a 5 hour stretch from about 3-4 weeks old, often 7-8 hours (barring some blips), but in the last few weeks she has been waking more and more often at night.
She used to cluster feed in the evening, feeding every hour from 7 o'c until a giant feed at 10.30ish.
Now she feeds every hour from 7o'c (but they're small feeds) & has a good feed around 10ish & falls asleep. As an example last night she fed every hour then...
slept at 10.30, woke at 11 - fed
slept again, woke at 1 - fed
slept again, woke at 3 - fed
woke almost 20mins later - fed
woke at 5.30 - fed,
woke for the day before 7.
After gorging herself at night she isn't really hungry in the morning and would happily go 4.5 hours without a feed (though I usually try to feed her to sleep for a nap as she gets very grouchy - rubbing her eyes etc). She's very happy when she wakes at night & chatters away to herself but if you ignore her for too long, she doesn't go back to sleep but cries. My husband tried to settle her last night at one stage & she started roaring!
I feed her in a dark room lying down during the day as she gets distracted very easily at the moment.
She starts out the night in her cot, but usually ends up in the bed on the first, second or third wake up depending on how tired I am. She's in a Pavlik harness so takes up a lot of room in the bed, and there isn't room for the 3 of us & I like having my husband in the bed! Plus I wonder if she is waking more frequently because she can smell milk & is taking advantage of my proximity to snack/comfort suck when she feels like it.
Kellymom has some tips for reverse cycling, but nothing that I'm not already doing. If anything, I probably offer her boob too often during the day as her weight gain slowed a lot when she was put in the harness first so I worry she's not feeding enough.
Please, please, please help if you have any ideas. I'm so tired & this has been going on for weeks. I can't even sleep sometimes because all I can think of is how I'll be awake in a couple of hours time anyway. I'm even tempted to have a large glass of wine this evening to see if it helps her fall asleep!!
PS I know we were lucky to have her sleep through the night at the beginning & not everyone even gets that now [hblush]