Help I'm exhausted!

[courts1704]

Hi Guys,

My 8 month old wakes up every hour at night if not more. This has been going on for months and I'm completely at my witts end and exhausted 😩 He is a breast fed baby and has always been fed to sleep, which I'm sure is what the problem is.

His routine:
6pm dinner
6:15 - 7 Play
7 Bath
7:30 Boob and bed (put down asleep)

Do I need to just bite the bullet and sleep train? I can't stand to let him cry but something has to be done now.

Thanks

Do you feed him back to sleep each time? If so that has to stop. (And yeah, he will cry!) yes you are right, something has to be done - you can’t carry on with so little sustained sleep. He’s not a little baby any more, he doesn’t need milk in the night.

PS I did this to my 8 month old, decided one day I couldn’t do it anymore. So when she woke up, I would cuddle her back to sleep rather than feed her. IT WAS AMAZING - so glad I did it! After 2 nights she didn’t wake up to be fed anymore, and her naps in the day were longer too, because she had learned how to get to sleep without being fed. Your baby will adjust and will probably want more milk during the day. Good luck!

I don't necessarily think you need to "sleep train", but rather get baby used to breaking that link that between feeling safe enough to fall asleep means feeding. So during wake ups using alternative methods of soothing her such as stroking and gentle talking etc. At bed time you could try feeding a tiny bit earlier and keeping baby awake with drawing small circles on hands and feet, talking to baby, having some quiet music on in background etc, then a story afterwards...so basically you're doing a wind down activity in between feeding and sleep to develop the same safe feelings. Just some ideas. Best of luck.

Sorry no idea where the first 'between' came from!

Or 'her'....can you tell I'm multitasking badly!

For another perspective and of course you can do with it what you will. For the first 12 months of my son's life he didn't sleep. We were up so many times in the night and as he is breast fed I took the brunt of this mostly alone. I went back to work when he was 8 months old and it has been exhausting. All that being said I didn't want to sleep Train and I didn't want to lose the skill of 'feeding to sleep' as it worked so well. I basically buried my head in the sand.
Some how at 12 months he finally got it and is only waking twice. My partner takes one and I take the other. It's so much better and we did nothing! He does now wake up between 5 & 5:30 but we are in a much better place than we were.
Sometimes I think they just need to figure it out themselves and some take longer than others

If you're feeding to sleep then why dont you cosleep and feed lying down?

The problem here is baby doesn't go to sleep where she stays asleep, but is put down already asleep. If you're going to feed to sleep it is much better to feed her on your bed and then leave her exactly where she is once asleep.