8.5 month old DS has a heart condition which was discovered a few weeks ago, he has a moderate sized hole in his heart and will require surgery at some point. His condition means that he is really prone to chest infections and has spent a lot of his life so far with some sort of virus. So I’ve always fed him to sleep and done whatever I can to keep him happy and comfortable. His sleep is terrible. He wakes hourly at night and will only be fed back to sleep. Between 2-4 months he was only having two, sometimes one, feed per night and then we hit the 4 month regression, we have never recovered from it.
He feeds plenty in the day and is now on 3 meals a day, when he wakes in the night he barely takes any milk so most of the time I don’t think he’s hungry. We’ve had a couple of nights where he only woke every 2 hours, I could manage with that, but the hourly wakes are making me feel literally ill on top of the stress of his heart condition and another child to look after.
DH does try and help but DS ends up crying a lot so I feed him in the end as I don’t want to put any stress on his body by him getting upset. I’ve mentioned this to his consultant who has told me that him crying is not going to worsen his condition in any way but I can’t let him cry, but at the same time feeding him hourly through the night is no longer sustainable, I am on my knees with exhaustion. We have tried co sleeping but DS still wakes up and he hates feeding on his side and always has done so I have to sit upright with him to feed him.
Does anyone have any advice or any really gentle no crying method that might be suitable for him? I have tried to just ride this out and hope that it passes but I’ve had 4.5 months of this and it’s not getting better.