my lo is 3 and still wakes 3-6 times a night am exhausted please help

[whitebeacheshasathing4santa]

co-slept up until he was 2.6 [and he was a bad sleeper then too] put him in his own bed and did gradual retreat all great he goes to bed fine no problem but it does not mateer whwt time he goes hhe sleeps solid for 3-4 hours then wakes nearly every hour sometimes you will settle him and then 15 minutes later he wakes again and then finally at 6am thats it he is awake.
i have tried cutting out his daytime nap,taking him out for long walks and truly exhausting him etc and all that does is means that as oon as his head hits the pillow he sleeps but again just for 3-4 hrs and then normal
i have tried gently waking before the 3-4 to kind of 'break' it but as you can see by the time of this message whatever i am doing is not working.
i have tried talking to him and using rewards but he still wakes
i am at the end of my tether i am soo tired a couple of months ago we talked about ttc and i hve said i can't cos i just cannot cope with the thought of even more sleep deprivation
i can see why they use it as a form of torture
if anyone has any help please i would be very grateful

Yes I know how that feels, and it does feel like torture.
DS has improved, still wakes up too early, but at least doesn't wake up 3-4 times in the night.
I'm afraid that the only thing that really worked was to ignore him. I spent two straight nights putting him back in his bed with no chitchat, not even showing him I was upset, just putting him back in his bed as soon as he got up, I had to drink strong cups of coffee before bedtime (which I never do) to make sure I survived the night and was able to keep awake.

It worked, but couldn't have done it without those coffees (and then it took me a few days to recover! but it was worthed).

so a bit of an update i swapped his rooms but he is still waking regularly and the other night had a night terror which was awful.
i think i just have to resign myself to the fact that he is a 'waker'

it is vv tiring

I took my dd to a cranial osteopath just as she turned 4 because I couldn't stand it anymore. It was 2 or 3 or 4 times per night most nights and she didn't want anything she was just awake - drove me insane!!

Anyway after 1 treatment she was much better, after 2 treatments it stopped She now very very rarely wakes. She doesn't need much sleep, never has but no more disturbed nights.

ahh did you i may look at that he actually did have co when he was 3 weeks old -he had 3 sessions and it did ease his crying etc ah thanks i will tyry that i think

My only regret is that I hadn't done it sooner!

She did sleep at nights from around 3 months to 18 months then the waking started. She was a very screamy baby as she had undiagnosed silent reflux and only ever slept 8 hours out of 24 until past 6 months when they diagnosed her.

I am much more tolerant of her lack of sleep now that we don't have disturbed nights. She sleeps about 8.30pm until 6.30 and was 5 in the summer (going to school made it a bit longer for a few weeks!)

ditto screaming baby my gosh my lo screamed'cried constantly for the first 3 weeks hence why we went to see co our doctor at the time said he had never in all his 22 yrs of being a gp known a baby that could cry so loudly and for so lng ad his words to me wer and you being so quiet and calm i don't know whay to say
my dh had a few words for him thanks for that advice tough.
as i said we don't have a problem him getting into bed its getting him to stay asleep
can i ask did she even stop calling out for you i mean she slept all through

she never called out for us, she always got up and came to me (I have them well trained) and it just stopped completely.

She would come in and ask if it's morning or that she needed a wee, or wether she could get up etc. She just stopped waking up I assume because she stopped coming and waking me up.