Baby sleep 5 months

[Unicorns41]

My 5 month old DS has been going through a regression since just before 4 months…. It’s seriously starting to affect me mentally as I’m just not getting enough sleep.

He is EBF (will not take a bottle). He has a bedtime routine if bath, (sometimes a story) then bed. Will usually give him a dream feed at 10 ( in the hope he’ll sleep longer!), then he tends to be up at 12am, 2am, 4am, 5am and then for the day just before six.
He also tends not to settle without a feed, I try just rocking but wants to feed.

Last night was awful and I’m exhausted. Anyone have any advice which worked for them which got baby to sleep through (or even just a few hours in a row!).

Have you got a partner? My DS is a little older at 6 months, but we had the same issue of regular 2 hourly wakes wanting a feed (also breastfed), so we started sending dad in to do alternate resettles, and that worked wonders in stretching his sleep - so not fully night weaning, but not feeding unless it's been roughly 3.5 hours since his last feed. Yes, DS wasn't too happy to start with, but he would go to sleep when rocked by DH eventually (he wouldn't let me use this method as he can smell my milk, hence you ideally need someone else to step in). We did similar with DD, as a kind of step towards when we fully night weaned at 10 months (once weaning was properly established so I was certain hunger wasn't an issue), but even at 5 months they are able to go over 2 hours without needing food, so it's about weaning them off of that habit. Every week we extend the gaps between feeds by half an hour, so it's slowly getting me longer stretches of uninterrupted sleep, and DS is already sometimes naturally going 4-5 hours some nights.

There's obviously quicker methods you could use, and some may come along with some useful advice about sleep training, but I feel more comfortable with a more supported and staggered approach to extending sleep. It's an individual choice though

We went through something similar, our good sleeper turned into a terrible sleeper at around 4 months, and it just wouldn't improve, so about a week ago i started sleep training him. I read a few books and settled on Lucy Wolfe's method. (No crying, you stay with them as they learn to fall asleep in their own bed) The idea is that the reason behind frequent wakings is that they haven't learned to self sooth and therefore require you to put them back to sleep after every sleep cycle. You need to start getting them less dependent on rocking/feeding/dummy. It seems to be working wonders for us, certainly not sleeping through the night but getting 3-4 hour stretches which is a huge improvement from just a week ago!