Sleep deprivation hell

[Scotgirl35]

Ladies...can anyone help I'm desperate 🙏🏻
I'm on my 3rd course of antibiotics in 4 months now for recurring tonsillitis and just feel so run down and low in mood 😢
DS is 5.5 months old, EBF, and a terrible sleeper...wakes hourly all night 😞
About a week ago DH and I decided we had to 'tackle' it as it's really affecting my health, and I also have a 4year old and 2 year old to look after. Anyway we decided to teach him to do the magic 'self settling'...and to my amazement it was really easy 🤷🏼‍♀️ I give him a bottle of formula now before bed and lay him down awake, give him his dummy and then lie with my hand on him til he falls asleep...no crying...takes about 5mins 🙌🏻
However...it has done zero to help! He still wakes hourly all night and will only go back to sleep if I BF him 😕 why??! Is he genuinely hungry? Surely not hourly? Do I need to go cold turkey and 'refuse' to feed him at night??
...there's maybe no answer but it's nice to chat sometimes 🙏🏻☺️

Probably a daft question but do you try a dummy first before a BF?
I ask because I’ve recently read that if they fall asleep with a dummy they are expecting the dummy to be there if they wake after a sleep cycle and will wake up if it’s not in thier mouth. So popping it back in may be the answer.

My DS is a bit younger than yours but I have stretched out the time between feeds by popping his dummy in on first waking, then he usually goes another half an hour to an hour before waking again at which point I will feed him.
Over the last couple of weeks we have gone from feeding every hour to every 3 hours doing this.
I’m obviously still waking up to put the dummy in, but it’s a lot less tiring than getting up to feed.

Have you tried white noise? I have a machine in my LG room and I keep it going all night. She generally wakes 3-4 hours for a feed (4.5 months) but if she wakes after 2 hours i pick her up, pop in her dummy and rock her a bit and she will usually just go back to sleep in my arms. I don't know if thst helps x

Thanks for the replies ladies. Yes I've been trying to resettle him with the dummy if he wakes before say 3 hours since last feed (or at least 2 🙄)...but he just won't settle?? DH has managed with dummy to rock him back to sleep on a couple of occasions but then as soon as he's back in snuzpod he's awake 5mins later and still wants feeding 😒
Maybe I need to persevere with this though and accept some long periods of being awake over night until he gets he message that boob isn't on tap hourly! 3 hourly is acceptable surely at 5.5months??!! He feeds well in the day.... suppose you always have that doubt with breast feeding whether they're hungry or not but being realistic he can't be hungry hourly can he 🤷🏼‍♀️😂