8 month old doesn't sleep for long periods

[Marinetta]

My son is now 8 months old but has always been a bad sleeper. As a newborn he would sleep 3 hours straight during the night but then the 4 month sleep regression hit and his sleep has never recovered. On average he wakes up every hour during the night and after 5 months of being woken up every hour I'm so sleep deprived that I can't take any more. He's breastfed and we cosleep, I'm currently trying to get him to go in his cot as I want him sleeping in his own room by february but it is a disaster. Last night in the cot he woke up 7 times in a 2 hour period so in the end I just brought him in with me to get some rest.

I've tried patting and shhhhhing but he bats my hand away and his cries drown out the shhh so that doesn't work and usually its rare that he will be rocked back to sleep, he just always wants to be fed to sleep even though he's not hungry. I know that it's normal for breastfed babies to have this attachment to the breast but this seems extreme and I'm wondering when things are going to improve. Has anyone else had a baby like this and when/how did things get better?

I really feel for you! My DS was like this until about 6 or 7 months. We had to co sleep until 7 months when he started pulling to stand and then we put him in his cot because it was unsafe for him to sleep in bed as he would start moving as soon as he woke up which resulted in zero sleep for everyone.

We moved him to his cot at 7 months and also introduced a comforter which I wore for a few days so it smelled like me. First night I fed him to sleep until he was out cold and he woke up immediately upon being placed on the mattress. I let him cry for a minute while I was in the room then picked him up and fed him again until he was fast asleep then put him back in the cot.

When he woke up, I’d wait for a minute or two to see if he fell back asleep then go in and feed him again. It was a hard few nights but eventually he got used to the cot and now only wakes once a night at 11months. He also frequently wakes for the day at 5am so I’m not the best example of a success story but we at least get some uninterrupted sleep without him in bed!

I used to hate hearing this but sometimes it just takes perseverance with the cot. In the end I think my DS is much happier sleeping on his own (even though he didn’t think he would be).

Good luck!

Thank you! Its nice to know it's not just my baby that refuses to sleep. I think I am a bit weak in caving in and putting him in the bed when he won't settle in the cot. I'm so desperate for some sleep that I do give up too easily just so that I can get some rest. Maybe I'll just have to persevere with it this week and have a few days of being a zombie.