5 month old up every 2 hours

[Historygirl91]

My 5 month old DD is still waking every 2/3 hours in the night. She is EBF and goes back to sleep quite quickly after a feed, but I’m not sure if she is genuinely hungry or wanting the comfort of sucking.
I really don’t know if this is normal behaviour? She was sleeping through the night from about 8 weeks until a month or so ago (a dream!) but seems to have gone back to a newborn pattern. I realise sleep regression is a thing but this has been going on for a good month now. She also barely naps in the day, perhaps a couple of hours all day but still doesn’t settle down to sleep until around 9pm.
I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong, I’m so tired!
Does anybody have any experience of this/tips?

Hey regressions are tough!

Maybe try just comforting her to sleep and seeing if she settles.

The other thing I would do is start giving her a bottle of expressed breast milk before bed. She might very well sleep longer on a fuller belly.

My friend EBF's her 10 month old and she was still waking every 3/4 hours to feed but since giving her a bottle of breast milk before bed she's slept through basically, or maybe 1 wake a night.

See if that works if you don't mind pumping x

Every two hours isn't a newborn pattern. Every two hours is normal for many babies until 18 months. What you're describing is regular sleep. Sleep isn't linear. It isn't poor then better. It is up and down for the first few years. Eventually, like walking and talking, your baby will learn how to sleep without your help.

Most of sleep is out of your control and is largely genetic. You just have to survive the leaps and growth spurts and teething and weaning that all impact on sleep.

No advice really but just to say I’m the same with my 13 week old. She was sleeping 5 hour stretches regularly a month ago, now every night it’s 2-3 hours. Some nights it’s one hour.

i see 3 hours sleep as a good thing now, with how bad it’s got.

Very normal, we had this til 14 months

Yes it's normal and yes it's dreadful. I've been through it with my first son and we sleep trained using the CALM approach by Hannah. I now have a 5.5 month old who we will be doing the same with shortly! It was transformational. It's a choice though and some people are against it. Good luck 💐

My LO is 4 months and I could have written this myself. (Apart from the fact that he has never slept well and weve never had anything better than this!) But it's bloody hard work. He's tried to be up after an hour a few times tonight and I've worked hard at resettling him rather than feeding, but it just means I'm awake more when I do this as it does take a little bit of time. Wish I had some answers for you.

Thanks everyone for the reassurance, hopefully she will decide to sleep through one of these days 😅 glad to hear that this is normal

EBF two babies and both did the same thing at 4 months. Ultimately they weren’t hungry, if you google the 4 month sleep regression you’ll see it is an actual change in how they sleep. Baby is using you as a means to go back to sleep. For me it got worse until they were waking every 40 minutes towards the morning hours as sleep got lighter.

im afraid the only way around it was sleep training, putting them down awake and comforting them intermittently until they fell asleep (controlled crying I suppose). I refused to feed to sleep. So I would feed before bath time for example to break the sleep association. I also wouldn’t feed before midnight as baby didn’t need feeding before then overnight (happily going 5-6 hours before the regression!) so 7-12 didn’t seem too difficult.

within 2 nights we were down to 1 wake up, usually around 2-3am for a feed (where they were genuinely hungry rather than sucking for comfort) and nap times got longer too.

Those who waited for baby to grow out of it (I waited 6-8 weeks) still had sleep problems at age 5! I couldn’t have coped. Good luck whatever you decide

Tell me about this CALM approach?? I've had a quick Google and looks like she gets great reviews, I'd genuinely be interested in doing something like this...

@Cindy1802 it's basically a gentle sleep training approach so that your baby learns to link sleep cycles without needing your help to settle them. With my first son, he was so reliant on boob to get him to sleep, and then when he woke through the night (every hour at 6 months 😵‍💫) he needed boob to get back to sleep. We started with just holding him to get him off to sleep, moved onto him being in the cot with a hand on him, then just by the cot, and we can now say "night night" and he'll stay in bed until he falls asleep (he's nearly 3). It was all tied up with weaning too, and so because he was 6 months old we were able to night wean him (no breast feeding during the night). It did require quite a lot of effort and perseverance (because it wasn't a cry it out approach) but I can really recommend it. Hannah does courses too that are a bit more pricey but it was worth it for the outcome we got.
Lots of people don't want to sleep train but honestly I could not have got through going back to work (after a full year) and then a second pregnancy without it!! Good luck 😄

@neverwakeasleepingbaby thank you, I may well look into it. Do you think 4 months is too young, knowing the content of the course?

I'm not against sleep training, we did it with our then 18 month old who needed us to shh and pat him to sleep which was taking over an hour every night and I was losing my sanity. Since we did it, he goes to bed very happily, we tuck him in, give him a big kiss and a cuddle and walk out of the room. He's now 3. We never had these issues this young with him, but this baby is waking sometimes hourly for a feed overnight and we've just seen absolutely no improvement since he was about 4 weeks old so I'm starting to feel like I need to do something. I am a believer in how important sleep is for everyone, and just because we are surviving (just) on minimal sleep right now, doesn't mean we should just accept it! But at the same time he is very young so I want to do it in the most gentle and kind way possible.

Ah that sounds tough! My almost 6 month old wakes a lot through the night too so solidarity! I think 4 months may be too young since, like I say, it was the night weaning that made the biggest difference for us with our older one, and that's not recommended until after 6 months.
I've not read the new CALM book but obviously it's much cheaper than one of her courses so you could see what she says about that age?