Why won't he stay asleep??

[Zaurak]

Ds is almost six months. We rode out the four month sleep regression and now I'm able to put him down sleepy but awake again. Great.

Or not ... Because he won't stay asleep. He's waking constantly - every hour or so, sometimes more often. Last night he woke every 60-90 minutes and he was ravenous. Really really hungry. He's bf but gets solids with tea as he's right at the bottom of the weight percentiles.

Well meaning but crap advice has been to night wean - I think that's a daft idea as he's skinny, he's hungry and he obviously can't go even half the night without food

What am I doing wrong? I physically cannot feed him more in the day - I offer boob constantly.

He wakes after 10-20 mins when I finally get him to nap too. He just can't seem to stay asleep

Oh I really feel for you Zaurak. How long has he been like this. Could it be he's boosting your milk supply by frequent feeding because he needs more? If you keep feeding hopefully that'll work? What does your hv say?

I could have written a lot of your post. DS2 is 6 months and is still waking 4, 5, 6 times a night. He is at the other end of the scale and is a right chunky monkey, above the 99th percentile, but he still wakes . There is no way I would think about night weaning him, he might be hungry or he might just want the comfort so I'm just going with it. It's exhausting though. We're co sleeping so feel like I'm always turning and latching him back on!
Sorry there's no advice in there but just wanted you to know you're not alone. And it does get better DS1 is 12 now and can happily spend 14 hours fast asleep in bed!

Well he's never been a good sleeper - I'm not either to be honest, maybe he's inherited my crap insomnia...

We were doing ok up till 3.5 months. He'd feed, go down awake, sleep for five hours then wake 1-2 times for milk. Totally fine, no problem with that. Naps were just not happening but nights were OK.

At 3.5 months he stopped being able to self-put-to-sleep and we had a pretty miserable time of just not sleeping at all. Napping was a a nightmare, nights were hellish. I assume that was a 4 month regression. I started being more focuses on day feeding and naps, and try (still trying) to get three naps a day in, concentrating on awake time being no more than 90 mins. He's a crap napper too. Will not go down awake EVER for a nap . Snaps awake after ten minutes, etc.

We do sometimes co sleep - if he's just not settling later in the night I'll take him in with us. I then get very little sleep and he doesn't sleep much either, although I save my back from all the cot lifting!

He's obviously hungry, and he's bordering on underweight (to be honest I think he is underweight. He was grams into 'normal' after not pooping for days. If he'd been weighed an hour later after the particularly epic nappy he'd have been underweight...) I feed on demand and he has solids too. Maybe the solids are displacing the milk? Is there anything really calorific I can give him at this age. Avocado is eaten grudgingly but anything else I could try?

I guess he could be cluster feeding yes...

My clinic nurse (we don't have HVs) is a bit useless to be honest... No suggestions from her other than give him formula...

He's having a growth spurt. Try purees. You can feed him at breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner...stay away from fruit and bulk him on veggies wiith potato/rice/pasta pureed. Porridge too is bulky. He might need a bit of water if he's eating more. Keep up the milk feeds too. Start giving food little and often, then when he eats more he can have more less often.

Sounds like he's grazing a bit so can't tell the difference between hunger and thirst.

Can you offer 4 meals in the day breakfast 2 lunches before a later tea? Even just a banana or cereal?

Milk at bedtime?

So he learns hunger?

I paced out DD feeds for made her wait slightly longer stretches so she ate more when fed.

Just an idea

Will try it! Thank you!