8 month old waking hourly, end of tether

[CathyandHeathcliff]

I’m so sleep deprived, I keep mixing up my words, can’t write or speak properly. Keep doing things wrong. I don’t feel capable of looking after my 8 month old DS all day by myself like this.

Basically he wakes hourly in the night. There is the night when he will sleep 4 hours in a row, but these are few and far between.
He needs feeding in the night to get back to sleep. I’m trying not to do it every time, but I’m finding it really difficult as he cries/screams until I do. He’s still in our bedroom, as his room will be in the attic, so one floor above us.
This morning he was up and ready to play at 5:30am.
Both me and my OH are so exhausted.
I really don’t want to do cry it out 😓

You need to look at gentle sleep training - there are other methods to help rather than just cry it out. I'd advise you and your husband choose a gentle method such as pick up put down. You and your husband will need to completely agree to the method and pick a good time to start (ie not on holiday / when you or husband are away for work)
I found that splitting the nights really helped so it allowed each of you a chunk of sleep. Set up a bed on sofa or spare room and one of you has baby and does the sleep training method from 7-1ish then the other takes over until morning. It's very tough good luck

Sorry, that sounds really really tough.

Could you start by night weaning? So just offer water (if he takes a bottle) and cuddle back to sleep each time? I promise you he will fall back asleep without milk. My 8 month old last month was waking 3-4 times a night for milk and we offered water, he took a little the first few times but after that he was happy to be cuddled back to sleep. It might lessen the wake ups? I think the most he cried for was ten minutes and I was holding him the whole time so it really wasn’t as painful as I had imagined.

At first I felt selfish thinking I was putting my own needs above his but I can see now that he needed the sleep as much as I did. We did go on to do some sleep training and now he sleeps through and he’s so happy and well rested. But the night weaning is a really easy first step. You just have to be consistent because he won’t understand if you give him milk sometimes but not other times.

I also found once we night weaned he started taking a lot more milk during the day, at 8 months they’re perfectly able to make sure they’re getting enough nutrients.

You need to stop the night feeds, it's comfort and habit. They soon get fed up of it if you offer water. Low lighting, gentle whispering and keep it really calm and quiet. Mine all went through it but came out the other side again. You just need to let them know there is nothing worth waking up for!