9 month old waking every hour- when will this end?

[Torontocanada]

FTM here. My 9 month old has never been a good night sleeper, but I was fine with that because I had in the back of my mind that it will get better with time.
Fast forward till now and it hasn’t. If anything, he wakes more now then he did as a newborn! He falls back to sleep on the boob, I have tried rocking him before but this only works 50% of the time and I hate putting him down asleep because he often wakes up so I resort to breastfeeding!
I don’t want to do any crying it out because he is a sensitive baby and I don’t think he would react well to that.
But equally, I want something to change because I can’t bear another 9 months (maybe more 😬) of this.
Has anyone had a bad sleeper and managed to fix it without a lot of tears?
I’m not expecting miracles, I would in fact be very happy with him waking every 3 hours.

my eldest, now almost 3, was a bad sleeper. his sleep improved hugely at about 1 year, and up and down 1-2 but generally ok then started consistently sleeping through from age 2 onwards. We bedshared and that's how I got through it. didnt do anything as such, bf to sleep, bedshared, eventually it got better. there is an 8m sleep regression which may be affecting your DS. also I think separation anxiety is worst around that age?

If you are breastfeeding would you consider cosleeping? That's the only way I managed, I honestly think it is probably that or sleep training with crying. This is just anecdotal from my experience, but more gentle sleep training didn't work for us so I cosleep until DD was about 2, then worked on her going in a bed on her own when she had quite a lot more understanding.

We had hourly wake ups (with the occasional 2 hour stretch) until about 11 months when things dramatically improved and 3-4hour stretches (with the occasional 5 hour stretch) became the norm.

DS also dropped to 1 nap at the same time.

We cried it out - DD1 was waking every hour, then slept through after 3 nights of crying it out. We were at breaking point…. It worked for us.

Cosleeping is the only way to manage. You could try patting to sleep before offering boob at each wakeup, but sleep is shit for the first 1-2 years, so you just have to find a solution that gives you max sleep.

This sounds hard going. I’ve been really lucky never to have that problem and haven’t had to do crying it out as he’s just slept so well from the start. Over the Christmas holidays his daytime naps have been off quite often and he’s just been so out of his routine. For the first time in his life this week he’s been up again after going to bed twice. I think day time naps play a way bigger role than we realise. How are his naps? Is he getting a long enough stretch awake and tiring himself out again before bed? Could you do anything different with the bed time routine? We’ve always done a bath every night even though he doesn’t always need it, we just did it from when he was tiny so he knew that was bed time and it seems to have worked. I think the key is just stripping it back to basics.

I read Gina Ford when I was pregnant but didn’t follow any of the harsh stuff in it, he wasn’t in his own room or anything. It has case studies like this in it though and she gives advice on how she’s solved all these problems. I would say the whole huge fear of ‘crying it out’ that people have is sometimes incorrectly placed. You don’t have to let them scream for hours or anything horrible like that. It’s just about letting them self soothe (my little boy sucks his thumb, literally never cries), but it means he’s equipped to put himself back to sleep multiple times a night when he naturally wakes and I don’t know anything about it. I think a lot of the advice is just to go back in, cuddle, reassure and try again on repeat basically but it does seem to get better quite quickly. Hope you manage to get there with it and get a decent nights sleep

Same thing happened here at about 8/9 months. EBF, waking every 45mins to an hour. I was stir crazy.

Going into his own room improved things but not enough. I stopped going in and his dad went in instead with a sippy cup of water. He was sleeping through in less than a week.

It's the boobs. Drives them mental. Start giving your wee one a supper of porridge with mashed banana before bed. Their belly will be full. Then hand the nights over to your partner. If things lapse back during bouts of illness, get straight back to the new routine as soon as they are well again.

Thanks all for your responses.
We do actually co sleep already as that’s the only way I can survive, although it still means I am waking up to burp him after every feed.
He still gets gassy so we end up in a cycle of waking and wanting boob then not settling because he needs to burp then falling back to sleep on the boob then waking shortly after to burp again!
I have tried cutting out dairy for a month but saw no difference so I’m not sure why he’s still so gassy.
I think I may just have to preserve with other settling methods. He goes to nursery and they pat his back to sleep, he sometimes sleeps upto 3 hours like that! I’ve tried that but he just screams with me so I feel really stuck.

I didn't need to burp by this stage so that's a different thing to contend with. Do you think that if you separate feeding and sleeping he won't be as gassy and sleep longer? Will he go to sleep in a sling or pushchair? Can you try and replicate that sort of movement?

You have described my daughter - breastfed co sleeper who needed settling basically every hour. I dont know how I got through it in hindsight!

At about a year, when she dropped to one nap a day I saw improvement (I even started having some time to myself in the evening!) and although we do have setbacks, generally she is always improving as she gets older.