Hourly wakes for 2 months. Can’t carry on!

[Chocolatehobnobs25]

My 20 week old has been waking every 45mins to hourly since Nov 3rd and I’m so exhausted I don’t feel like I can carry on.

She is exclusively breastfed, has 3 naps a day, goes into her cot awake and falls asleep in there and uses a dummy. She was swaddled until last week but is now starting to roll so I’ve transitioned her out but now she continuously rubs her face and pulls her dummy out and then cries to have it put back in.

I was originally feeding her to sleep every time but I’ve now stopped this and only feed if it’s been 2-3 hour since the last feed. She will sometimes settle, other times she screams the place down. I use white noise, Ewan the sheep, have tried every clothing combination for bed going, she has a consistent bedtime routine and is in bed by 7.30-7.45pm every night. She will sleep in the pram or in the carrier if it coincides with her naps.

I still to wake windows and she goes off to sleep initially relatively easily although it has been harder since removing the swaddle. I’m absolutely exhausted and desperate. I cry every single day because of it. I can’t see an end to it all. My husband is amazing and is doing everything he can but he works long hours and needs his sleep too. I often co sleep but it makes no difference, she still wakes at least hourly. In the last 2 months she’s done maybe 5 stretches of 2 hours.

Please help me.

Have you ruled out medical issues like reflux? I had two very refluxy babies and they would not sleep for long stretches until much older, they were looking for comfort from the pain of the silent reflux.

it sounds like you have tried most things, you have done well to get her self settling to sleep so it sounds like it might be the swaddle being removed that is the issue. It has to be done though for safety at this age so I’d just crack on and keep trying for another few weeks.

If its still not improving then I’d be tempted to go one of two ways, one would be to just give up and exclusively cosleep so that you get some more sleep and just feed her whenever she wants. That’s what I did with my youngest as I didn’t have the energy to fix anything until she was much older. The other option would be to night wean asap once she hits 6 months and see if that helps. It might make things worse though!

We had this fairly consistently between 4.5 months and 6 months. It was awful, you have my sympathies. Our little boy seemed to just grow out of it. We put him in his own room, sent my husband in for every alternate wake up and eventually he started doing 2-3hr stretches at 6 or 7m ish and then only waking once at 9m. It's absolutely brutal when you're in it. I think dropping to 2 naps helped us but don't do it too soon otherwise you'll have early bedtimes and early wake ups to contend with too. Only other advice is to check they are well and truly tired as under tiredness is much more likely to be the cause of overnight wakes than overtiredness

@Guibhyl I’m fairly certain she doesn’t have reflux. She’s never shown any signs at all and is very happy and content in the day and after feeds. I think removing the swaddle has definitely made it worse but I know I just need to persevere with and it will pass. I think I'm very close to full time co sleeping which I don’t mind especially, I just find I sleep a little better with her in the cot.

@Petrie99 it’s reassuring to know it passed for you. My rational head knows that it will but it’s hard to remember that at 4am on your 10th wake up of the night 😴