5 month old waking up every two hours. Please help.

[MsHedgehog]

So DS has been going through the 4 month sleep regression since he was 3.5 months old. For around 7 weeks now, he only naps 30 to 40 minutes in the day, which I’m not too worried about as he wakes up happy and refreshed and isn’t over tired in the evenings or at bed time. But overnight, he wakes up every 2 hours! After 7 weeks of this, I’m really struggling and feel exhausted and starting to feel depressed.

Does anyone have any tips on how to encourage him to sleep longer? A handful of times, if I see him stirring I stick a dummy in his mouth and he has stayed asleep, but when it’s overnight I don’t notice him stirring until he’s fussing, at which point he needs boob. Sometimes he has a proper feed, at others it’s just comfort nursing.

What can I do to encourage him to sleep longer? I’m not keen to sleep train after researching it but he is good at falling asleep himself at the start of the night. At bedtime, I feed him and sometimes he feeds until pretty much asleep and I put him in his crib, or he’s still awake after his feed and I put him down anyway, and he will go to sleep either with or without a dummy - if he’s fussing I give him a dummy, but if he starts to get into position to sleep, I don’t give him one and he won’t take it anyway.

What can I do? Is this still the regression or has his sleep completely changed? Will it get better? Before the regression he would wake 2-3 times a night anyway for feeds, but he had longer stints in between feeds so it was doable. I just don’t know what to do.

He is 5 months old, but 4.5 months if we go by his due date.

I don't know what the answer is, as my dd was the same (every 45 mins- 2 hours). She did that from 4-15 more baths old, when I stopped breastfeeding and we did gentle sleep training.

My first DD was bottle fed but went through very similar at that age. We had a wobbly time 3.5-7 months (2 hourly night waking was regular but some good nights too- one wake up!). At around 9 months when I was going back to work we had to sleep train and I was shattered so we did the interval soothing thing which worked pretty well. We got down to one night feed and otherwise straight through which was fine and they dropped that naturally at 15 months.
OP lots kf people will say it’s common and biologically normal etc which of course it is and they are still v little. For now I’d ride it out and do whatever helps (white noise, dummy, nurse to sleep etc). If it continues and you’re struggling though gentle sleep training (eg no cry sleep solution) could be helpful. Don’t feel you have to put up with crap sleep just because plenty of people are willing too. I was a different person within a week of us all sleeping better and a much better mum in they day.

Night time sleep cycles are around 2h
Daytime sleep cycles are around 45m

So what's happening is your baby hasn't learnt to link from one sleep cycle to the next without waking in between.

This is partly developmental so won't change until baby is developmentally ready to learn. But just like all other aspects of development - the more you practice the quicker you learn.

Therefore always (night wake and daytime) try to resettle baby back to sleep before waking fully. Do it literally after every single sleep. Don't automatically go to getting baby up and feed- always give 10 mins or so to trying to resettle in-situ with the dummy. Practice makes perfect.