17 weeks hourly waking... Reassurance please!

[Ams25]

Okay, DS1 has always been a fairly rubbish sleeper but we are now falling into a new pattern of awfulness! he goes down at seven, generally sleeps until half eleven then wakes for a feed. So far so fair. He then wake again at two for another feed. Again, fine with me, he is EBF, may well be hungry. Now the fiendish part. He then wakes on the hour, every hour and will only be settled with the breast. We are cosleeping which does help but itis tough, especially as I then get up at six with DS1! Any suggestions apart from 'bottle feed' or 'start on solids' which are the helpful suggestions I've had thus far!

Four months = classic sleep regression age. Nothing to do with needing solids, and why the bloody hell would anyone want to give up the one crutch they do have (co-sleeping and breastfeeding, means you can feed lying down - bliss!) in favour of all that sterilising and heating?

Uh, but, I don't have any suggestions, it's just to be lived through, I think. Do you/can you go to bed at 7 as well for a while, then you'll get at least one long stretch of sleep?

Sounds like the 4 month sleep regression - if you search for it on here, there are lots of helpful threads about it. It's a developmental stage.

And FF and solids won't help - if they did, then every FF and/or weaned baby would sleep through (and they don't!) :)

No words of wisdom I'm afraid but some solidarity. My DS1 17 weeks too is doing exactly the same. He is bottle fed and we don't co-sleep so I wouldn't worry about those being contributory factors. He has also always been a rubbish sleeper but over the past 2 weeks reached new levels of awfulness. I think it's the 4 month growth/developmental spurt and I'm not sure there's much we can do about it (although - if you do crack it, then please, please, please let me know how!!!)

Thanks all! Have read up on four month sleep regression, guess that's it! Ellsbells it's good to know that others who are doing things differently are experiencing the same problems.... Not that I'm glad youre suffering too, but helps to know its not something we're doing wrong!