5 month old waking every hour - HELP!

[mumma2girlies]

My daughter has just turned 5 months old. Up until just before she turned 4 months she was often sleeping through the night like a dream....then I'm guessing the regression started! She will now sleep 1830/1900 until around 2230 and then the hourly wake ups begin. On the dot, every hour. "Sometimes" she does 2 hours, but more often than not it's one hour.

I'm assuming because the wake ups are like clockwork, that they aren't teething related etc...she is EBF and I'll often feed on wake up one, but then refrain on the next couple wakes as I don't want her getting too used to feeding to sleep. But it doesn't seem to help, the wake ups are still happening! Sometimes she'll let us tap/rock her to sleep, sometimes I give in and feed her.

During the day she's a bit of a 30 minute napper too. I follow wake windows of generally 2-2.25 hours, putting down awake etc. Sometimes she falls asleep on her own, sometimes she needs a bit of encouragement. If she does 2 x 30 mins naps I will try and do a contact nap for the 3rd to make sure she's had a decent nap. I feed on demand and offer a feed whenever I can during the day, to try and get the calories in.

I know it's likely a phase, but we are 5 weeks in now and it is rough. Any tips or tricks please?! Unless I blocked it out, I don't remember my toddler going through this phase!

Have you tried a dummy? It sounds like she wants a comfort suck and if you don't want that to be you, then a dummy is the next best bet.

I moved my baby to their own room at this point, even though the recommendation is six months. I sent Daddy in for wakes before 2am and 5am (roughly), and breastfed at that times to maximise the chances of baby being milk drunk and sleeping more heavily. We used a dummy until six months, when my LO started pulling it out constantly. We had some terrible nights, but a handful, not the weeks you have been through. Solidarity, it sounds tough.

I'd agree with the dummy recommendations. I never wanted to give mine a dummy, I have 4 children, grown up now. 2 out of the 4 used a dummy. 2 never wanted one and was fine without, 2 would like comfort sucking at night time and even though I've always hated dummies, for the sake of sleeping at night I gave them one. Sleep is too precious and important.
Sleep deprivation also makes you non productive the next day.
Sometimes if mine woke up in the night id put on a wind up musical toy / mobile and they'd go back to sleep
Don't be tempted to co sleep but you can maybe try her cot right next to your bed so she can see you

@bouncingblobwe tried a dummy when she was much younger but she never took to one so didn't try again, and we didn't need to as she never had trouble sleeping. But it seems she is struggling to join her sleep cycles in the night so a dummy may help...is 5 months old not too late to introduce one?

@OtterMummy2024 thanks for your reply. I have considered moving her to her own room....we also have a nearly 3 year old who she will be right next door to, so my fear is her waking her up all through the night 🙈🙈 she doesn't use a dummy, only because she never took to one when she had as younger, but I may give it a try. Willing to try anything at this point!

Babies can change their attitude to dummies over time though.

Our DS took to one quickly at birth, then from 8 weeks decided they didn't like one anymore (preferred sucking their thumb), then gave that up and went back to the dummy.

Dummies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes too. Even for a baby who likes dummies, like ours, they will absolutely refuse to take a shape which isn't their usual one. Try the all in one silicone dummies - they're a bit more expensive but they're safer and more comfortable for babies.

As others have said, try the dummy again, and also moving to her own room is a good one. Around 6 months our DS became a lot more aware of noises and movement at night, and often would wake up after a sleep cycle if disturbed. So me and DH were waking him up just from normal sleep noises. It improved a lot when he went in to his own room.

I think the plan may be dummy tonight, see what happens...and then perhaps move in to her own room of that fails. She's only 5 months though so I worry it's too early for that 😩

I wouldn’t introduce the dummy, you risk being woken every hour to replace it when it falls out.

i sleep trained at 5 months using the sleep train method which was very effective. Its extremely important that you are not expecting your baby to sleep too much in a 24h period, so you could try bedtime at 7:30pm, with at least 3 hours between bedtime and end of last nap, wake at 6:30am with naps capped at 2.5 hours per day. A lot of info online expects babies to sleep way more than they are capable of, which leads to undertired babies and not enough sleep pressure to stay asleep. You should not apply a sleep training method to an undertired baby.

if she falls asleep independently at the start of the night and isn’t undertired, you should see a big reduction in wakes if you are consistent for a few days. Two wakes for feeds is normal at this age so I would keep those. 30 min naps also normal - ours lengthened when we dropped to two naps per day around 7 months.

if you get to a point where she is sleeping through with just the two night feeds and you are also waking her from every nap then add 30 mins of sleep into your routine.

@Quickdraw23 thanks for your reply. Probably wasted a tenner today as got some dummies but she wasn't interested!

What sleep training method do you recommend?

She always goes down for her bed time sleep independently with little fuss. She woke today at 4pm from her 3rd nap (contact nap and I woke her at 4pm), put down in her next to me at about 645pm and she was soundo within 10 minutes. If our night goes as it has, she'll wake about 2230, then every hour until the morning!

She does seem to struggle going down for her daytime naps in her cot on her own, but she does give in eventually. Some times she needs more encouragement than others, there isn't really a pattern to them 🤷🏼‍♀️

Also more than happy to feed once or twice in the night, just not so keen on the hourly wake ups 🙈😂

@mumma2girlies if she goes to sleep independently then that’s great! The hardest bit is done. You might find that with some schedule changes this situation improves rapidly.

i used the sleep wave method, sorry meant to write that in the first post.

do you track sleep? Do you know how much she takes on average in a 24h period?

We had hourly wake ups for 6 weeks which started at 4 months old. Nothing we did changed it or made a difference.
It’s an awful time but you’ve just got to ride it out & all of a sudden it stops & they sleep again.
my baby did this pretty much every time they went through a development stage.
He started reliably sleeping through from 12 months.

At five months and EBF she may be waking up because she is hungry. We had the same with DS. We got the message when he started grabbing toast off the breakfast table!

Maybe it is time to introduce more calories into her diet?

Probably hungry, IME

Yep, if you choose to start weaning before six months (or at six months) try introducing the evening meal first. I would put peanut butter into porridge for the calories.

Thanks @Ernestina123and @Riverflow6 - would that cause her to wake up exactly on the hour every hour? She's only just 5 months, so has 4 weeks until 6 months. She is definitely showing an interest in food and has good neck strength but I don't think she's quite there for sitting safely yet 😕

Last night there was some improvement - we had our normal wake at 2240, then 0140, 0440 and awake at 0630. Didn't do much different to be honest except changed out her white noise machine for one we had for our toddler which I think is "pink noise" as opposed to white. Perhaps she preferred that! Also DH was working night so maybe he snores too much and that's what waking her 😂😂

Agreed. Poor thing is waking up hungry, not being fed then suprise suprise she's waking up again 🙄