Really desperate about frequent waking 19wk old

[missymum]

Hi really at the end of my tether with dd2 who is fully breastfed. Was a dream newborn who did 4 hrly stretches of nightime sleep from newborn till 8 weeks of age, could hardly believe my luck as such a contrast to dd1 who was a terrible sleeper, but with dd2 she has had a lot of colds since 8 weeks old and since 12 weeks has been waking 2 hrly or more and won't settle without a feed. A typical night after going down semi awake at 7pm , would involve wakings at 930, 1230 230 430,6, 645.
I simply cannot sustain this any longer, tonight after trying to settle her at 9 without feeding using pat shh was terrible, she screamed for almost an hour with no let up untill I gave in. She isn't hungry am pretty sure, and co sleeping which I often do part way through the night is making the situ worse as she often wakes hrly then and I am so uncomfortable.
I also don't think it's the four month growth spurt as she often falls asleep at the boob with very little drinking during at least half of those wakings..
Today I was so tired I almost fell asleep driving which terrified me, and made me realise I have to do something, and rang my hv. She suggested getting dh to go to her and do pick up put down every other 2 hrs thro the night to teach her to do 4 hr stretches again and she felt that the two hrly waking was unlikely to improve on it's own due to it being habitual waking due to all the illness.
Am worried about doing pupd and all the crying involved, if because how can a baby know when 4 hrs have passes rather than 2? Am so confused but officially desperate too.
Dh works long hrs and am concerned as am so emotional and ratty with dd1 as just dog tired, has anyone else been thro similar ? Any words of wisdom?

No better, in fact she is waking even more frequently in the early evening which is grim, hope you are continuuing to get more sleep than me bluechampagne!

We had a rotten night on Saturday but by and large it's still better than it was this time last week. Have you seen your GP in case there's an undiagnosed ear infection or something?

Buckets of sympathy for you; hope it gets better soon.

Massive sympathies, missymum. I found this period to be the hardest - and I was BFing twins.

What are her feed times like during the day? Does she have a long spell during the day when she sleeps and doesn't feed (say, for a 4-5 hour spell?). This could be why she is hungry later on in the evening. Make sure she is feeding at least every 2-3 hours during the day and hopefully she will not be so hungry later on.

If she is crying for an hour then I would say she is hungry. At that age I would do 10 to 20 minutes of pat/shush or pupd but anything more than that and I'd feed them. They usually went down in the cot awake but sometimes fed to sleep.

This does pass, for me it ended when I started to wean them (which was 22wks which was early but I felt I had no choice at the time because I had constant feeding x 2).

Neez, big respect to you! She only sleeps for 3 x 30 min during day and never goes without a feed for 3 hrs, my h/ v has suggested weaning her slowly starting with one meal at teatime, the thing is pretty sure it's not hunger as forore than half of those wakeups ( tonight she has woken on the hr since 8 so far) it's a tiny suck on the boob and she's back to sleep. She actually took a dummy tonight for first time ever but it'sade no difference to the amount of waking.

Well there'll be lots of people on MN who say she does not need food, and ideally you should wait until 26wks, but I did introduce food early after experiencing similar feed patterns to you and it did help massively.

They also started sleeping for longer periods during the day - they started having a 2hr nap at lunchtime rather than just 45mins.

Perhaps try her with a bit of expressed milk mixed with baby rice at 6pm, give her something a little bit 'heavier' on her tum and see if that helps her settle during the evening.

bm needs to be her main source of nutrition still as that has all the nutrients and calories she needs, but IME it definitely helped to give them something more substantial alongside the bm. Good luck