5 month old night sleep - something I’m doing wrong?!

[MamaW05]

My 5 month old will give me maybe a 3-4 hour first block of sleep on a very good night if she survives the cot transfer.
She is then up every hour til morning. I have tried to resettle her in her next2me without a feed if she has just fed and she will try to go to sleep - rubbing her head back and forth with tired crying whilst I stroke her, then be still and quiet and I think she’s gone, but then she jolts awake and it all starts again. What could this be?! It seems she wants to go to sleep! I tried this for 2 hours last night.
if I bring her in to bed with me and give her boob she goes straight back to sleep but she is still up every hour and honestly I’m finding the constant feeding on and off tough. My husband has tried settling her but it’s a total no. I have fallen asleep with her in my arms feeding and she will sleep for longer but it’s not safe.
In the day she usually has 5 x 30ish min naps, occasionally longer and seems happy. We have been able to settle her in the cot a bit previously but recently it’s really been on me, car or pram. I watch her wake windows and the amount of day time sleep - does anyone have an other ideas on helping the hourly waking?! Even a 2h block would be nice!
I know many people will say settling in cot is key - we are trying as she has done this before and she always seems to try to go to sleep, but for whatever reason it’s not happening right now. We stay and stroke her, leaving her is not for us.
Any ideas/reassurance on the hourly waking?! My first was a terrible sleeper til 4 - trying to ‘fix’ it almost broke me and I swore I wouldn’t go down the path of getting myself in a tizz over sleep again but here we are x

I had a very similar situation to you, including bad sleeper older child and saying I wouldn’t get stressed about it! I found that sleep went to shit at 5 months with both of mine and struggled to get it back on track. I’d say continue with working on different ways to settle, boob is always the fastest but it does make things harder in the long run. Could it be teeth at the moment making it particularly Difficult?

Thanks @Restingpotato for the solidarity! She is a very chewy baby, but has been for a couple of months and not a tooth in sight.
Will keep trying on non boob settling, I just don’t know how long to keep going for - 2 hours seems like too much for both of us! With my first I fell into the thinking that if you persevere they will give in and I regret putting us both through trying so much as she never did give in! Finally managed to night wean at 18 months, not for want of trying.
Did it just click for yours one day?? Or was it a slow process?

This is 100% normal, little one is waking naturally at the end of each sleep cycle and needing the same sleep trigger (feeding) to go back to sleep. Cot settling would massively improve it, but it's tougher in the short term while you try to get there.

I really rate a sleep consultant called Hannah Love, she has a book and some online sleep courses as well as a free Facebook community, her methods are really gentle and her advice just makes so much sense. I used her 'stop feeding to sleep' course with my DS at around 4 months and honestly he was sleeping through or only waking once by 6 months. I have a 4 month old now whose sleep has just taken a nose dive in the last couple of days and am gearing myself up to start her methods again as soon as she gets over a cold.

Just to add, DM me if you want to know a bit more about it. I'd never leave either of mine to cry it out alone either. I found it very manageable with my first and I'm hoping for the same with my second once I start.