Please help! 6 month old wakes hourly through the night

[Sardines18]

My 6 month old has always been a rubbish sleeper but he would usually sleep 3 hours at the beginning of the night and then up every 1 or 2 hours after.

For the last couple of months he has been waking hourly from the beginning of the night. I have read numerous things about sleep regression and association etc hoping to find some answers!
I always put him back on the boob because he'll go straight back to sleep after this and the few times I've tried other methods it has just meant he wakes up completely and becomes impossible to get back down for an hour or so.

Do I have to resort to any sleep training? Ideally I don't want to but if this is a never ending phase then maybe I do! I once let him cry for about ten minutes whilst holding my hand but couldn't do any longer and I'm not prepared to.

We have been away for a few days and his sleep has got worse in that he's regressed to sleeping across my chest like he did at the beginning when recently he'd started to go into his Co sleeper bed very easily after the hourly feeds. Do trips away affect their sleep? Or is this just a coincidence?

Is there a chance that he will just grow out of it or do I need to do something now!?

First time mum and I'm worried!

Ds1 was an absolute nightmare sleeper and I decided that 1-2hours is just impossible. I was walking into things, dropping things, etc so things had to change. A very nice health visitor took pity on me and lent me a book called 'teach your child to sleep' by the millpond clinic. Best book I have ever read. So it has different techniques and routines and I chose the gradual withdrawal/retreat method. This involved teaching ds to go to sleep in the evening without a breastfeed then slightly extending the time between feeds at night. It was a very long process with some crying but as I was with him I could cope and as I could see progress I kept at it. After quite a few months he was sleeping 12 hours a night! If you are interested I can go into it in more details

My DS is the same. He's teething and he's just started solids. At the moment it's a process of elimination. Is it his tummy, his teeth or is it a new fad?

Have you just started weaning? Or could he be teething?

Lorisparkle I'm interested in the method you mentioned. Could you go into more detail?

Sylvannas we haven't started solids yet and I'm unsure of teething as he has been drooling and chewing for months now

We started to teach him to go to sleep by himself in the evenings so first we held, rocked, sang, etc anything to get him sleep without a breast feed. This was hard but we persevered and he did cry to begin with. After three days I stopped rocking him, then after three days I sat next to the cot holding his hand and stroking him, then I just sat with him, then I sat further and further away until I was out of the door. Each step took about three days but I was a little bit flexible and if he was ill I would go back a step or two before moving on again. During the night I would only feed him back to sleep after a given time. So I started with 90 minutes then increased by 15 minutes every three days or so. If he woke earlier I would sit holding and rocking him. Sometimes he would go back to sleep but sometimes he did cry. As it took quite a long time I was quite happy that he was ready for night weaning. However as your lo is only 6 months use your judgment as to how much they need feeding in the night.

Whilst it took a long time after talking to friends who had done cc I was happy we had put the effort in, if ds1 was poorly or we had been on holiday I just had to take a couple of steps back and quickly resettle them whilst they had to do cc again.

Lorisparkle thank you for detailing that.
How old was your son when you started the method? And how long did it take?

The health visitor came round when he was about 8 months old. So we started soon after that. At a year old he was having two proper naps and sleeping through but I went back to work and he regressed so it was another month after that. The health visitor said that as sleep problems take months to get so bad then you can not expect them to be solved in days. We were quite lax at times and took longer to go through each stage than the three days the book recommended so in theory the progress could be quicker.

I'm having exact same issues with 6 months old dd2. She slept so well in the beginning and we even have her in a co sleeper but she is waking hourly some nights and I've just had an episode where she woke at 00:56 so I fed her and held her but didn't feel she was sleepy enough to put down until 2:09 ... I had 3 attempts and now she's back feeding st 02:24!!!! I feel furious right this second if I'm honest. She's such a darling as well!
We have just started weaning 3 days ago and I'm desperately trying to get her on a bottle so husband can help more as I am just so tired and drained. She has been waking like this for about 2 months though. She is only taking 20 naps through day (if that) and only sleeps longer if I get her out in the pram. We do at least one pram walk a day so that's ok but it's not always possible to get out and about some days. This is really driving me demented. I may have to try the retreat method like Lori explained but I find it so hard to do anything around my dd1 who wakes if too much noise going on :(

I guess it's just nice to know I'm not the only one and someone can related to what I'm going through. Hope you manage solve the sleep issues. Just shows you despite being on no.2 ... I still don't have the answers!

Lorisparkle that's interesting. I may try delaying feeding through the night. My temptation is always to wait it out to see if it's just a long phase but I do worry that it is a habit that will never break. Most nights we end up co sleeping.

Myu5ername - good to know I'm not the only one this is happening too for so long. Most mums I speak to this seems to happen for a few days/week then goes back to being okay stretches again. I would be happy if I knew this would end with no training required because I really would rather not but I don't want to end up with a toddler still in my bed feeding hourly!