5 month still waking every 2hrs at night!

[Lizlaw77]

My 5 1/2 month old baby girl is still waking every 2hrs at night for feeds. She's EBF as she won't take a bottle or dummy. I've tried baby rice during the day and before bed as she's close to weaning age, but it doesn't make any difference. She feeds regularly also during the day.
I'm just at my wits end, I've not slept properly for 9months now and it's starting to take its toll on my physical and mental health. I'm exhausted all the time. It feels like sleep deprivation torture and I'm probably on getting 4hrs of 'sleep' a night!

Help!!

Same thing happened to my baby. 10 months now and wakes every 90 mins. Sorry! I started cosleepung, it really helps to make the wake ups and settles quicker. I also don’t waste my energy on housework, that can wait. I take up offers for people to push the baby in a pram so I can sleep. I do what I can to maximise my rest. It sucks, look after yourself!

My 5 month old son.... has me up every 40 mins to an hour every night! This has gone on for 3 months now. Everyone told me it was 4 months regression.... but it's gone on so long!! I EBF him and he screams if he doesn't get fed, even when sometimes it's just comfort. He doesn't like to be touched when tired, this seems to wake him more.
I cry with exhaustion daily.
I have asked everyone including my doctor and health visitor... but no luck. They just say (some babies do this)

I can't help
But I'm here every hour through the night if you need to rant to someone. Xx

Also OP try not to talk about sleep with people, it just used to make me feel worse!

DS1 did this and it was torture. We solved it with pick up put down sleep training.

DS2 sleeps like an angel, if it's any comfort!

14 month old dd still does the same. No advice I'm afraid but you do get used to the lack of sleep after about 7 months I found. You're not alone though!

Please don’t do the baby rice thing!! That stuff should be banned it’s not good for them!! Swells up their tummy too much!! That can be fairly normal for an ebf baby. I know it’s tough but just keep going! Wind could be an issue too?forget about everything else and just feed baby and sleep whenever possible. IT WILL GET BETTER! I promise.

My son did that. We did controlled crying at around 9 months and it worked in 3 nights. Apart from illness, he has slept through ever sinxe and he is over 2 now

My ds is also 5 months and we have had this for 6 weeks now. I can’t bear it anymore so have started very very gentle sleep training. I don’t leave him to cry but pick up and put down. We are on night 3 but the last two nights he has only had one wake up which is miraculous for us.

My DS did this and we had to sleep train for my mental and physical health. It worked so quickly and with so little crying, it was brill. Life got so much better for the whole family- he was far less miserable and I could function so DH wasn't so worried about us.

Floor bed with co-sleeping (so you can stay there safely or leave safely)? I found my dd (7 months) wakes every couple of hours from her bedtime until I get in with her, when she'll sleep much longer (and as I don't need to get up to feed her, I'm not too tired the next day anyway). Things will get better on their own though if you can find a way to cope! X

@KatnissMellark what sleep training did you do?

I'm not sure there's any specific name for the method we used- I just tried to teach DS to fall asleep without my boob in his mouth, then to join his sleep cycles without waking and wanting a boob in his mouth....so we started a clear routine which was repeated every nap/bedtime: sleep song, boob, then if he was falling asleep on the boob I'd gently wake him up and rock him to sleep, once he'd nailed that I started putting him down in the cot and patting bum to sleep, then just hand on him til he slept, then finally graduated to throwing into the cot and leaving him to go to sleep on his own.

I did this for naps first as had more willpower during the day. Also if he woke 'early' from his nap I'd go in and use the current method (rocking/bum patting/whatever) to get him to go back to sleep.

Once he nailed self settling and joining his sleep cycles for naps we then did it for the nighttime. Took about a week all in all to get him doing three good day naps and 7-7 overnight. If I remember correctly I did dream feed him before I went to bed up to about 8 months(?).

He was a malleable baby though and was actually just in the habit of waking so regularly and using me as a sleep aid due to allergies and resulting pain/reflux. This wouldn't have worked until we got those sorted I don't think, and I wouldn't have been able to leave him to cry as he was obviously in pain when those issues were going on.

He did cry a little bit when we did this, but honestly totally worth it for him and me.

Sorry, that last post was a reply to @MashNpeas

Thanks @KatnissMellark