Nursing association

[HappyGreyOtter]

Our LO has never been a particularly good sleeper. There has been 3 times over the past 5 months where he has slept 6 hours, otherwise he's waking every 3 hours, or nowadays, every hour.
He's EBF and I usually nurse him to sleep, during the days this isn't always the case.

I've tried changing it so that at bedtime he isn't nursed to sleep, but this doesn't seem to make a difference, and I've also tried to not nurse during the day time naps. I try to make sure the sleep pressure is right, he's not over tired, he's not under tired. I am SO tired. It's a mind field, and then I read about other people's experiences, people who haven't particularly put any thought into it what so ever, and it just makes me feel so hopeless.

Is there anyone else in this situation? I feel like whatever I do, he doesn't sleep. It's been five months of sleep deprivation torture. I get so anxious in the evenings just knowing that once I put him down, I'm on a timer because he'll need resettling every 45 minutes or so.
I know he's probably got a nursing sleep association where he can't link his cycles himself but I'm not sure how else I can help him figure that out.

Anyway, a bit of a reassurance and alliance would be helpful right now...

How old is he? Is he 5 months?

He is indeed! (I've just joined Mumsnet, I'm not sure if this is replying to your comment or not :))

Unpopular opinion maybe but it's why we sleep trained around 6 months. It was taking us 1 hour+ to rock him to sleep and then woke every 45-90 minutes. BF to sleep wasn't even working anymore.

To our surprise, he didn't even cry for 10 minutes, it was a lot less. We sleep trained for naps too. I still BF back to sleep in the night but it reduced the night wakings to just 2-3.

We used Ferber. Dad did the "check ins" as he got too upset if he saw me. I swear he was getting so overstimulated, he was eventually relieved to just be put down.

Sleep was not perfect after that, teething and many, many illnesses fucked it up constantly but it was so much better. Around age 2 -2.5 we knew we would get a good night sleep every night, reliably.

Waking every 3 hours at 5 months is totally normal unfortunately. You could try feeding a little more frequently during the day, adding in another daytime feed and trying breast compressions but none of that is guaranteed.

At 6 months you can move them to their own room if you want to. I found mine still woke but not as often as when they were close to me.

And welcome to MN

This! Honestly if you can safely cosleep and do side lying breastfeeding you will get far more sleep as you barely have to wake up yourself. You don’t need to ‘sleep train’ ever if you don’t want to. Look at Helen Ball’s book about baby sleep. Overtired isnt real-houly wakes suggest baby needs later bedtime or less sleep in the day. I would wait to put him to bed until when you go to bed, we did that when my daughter was that age. As it’s advised to be in the same room anyway