Hourly wakes ruining my MH

So my (6mo) baby used to sleep for 3hour blocks at night and has progressively gotten worse since she hit 3 months and now she's waking up every hour. I am finding it physically and mentally damaging, I dread night time and all day I'm obsessively reading books and searching the Internet for some magical fix, it's all I can think about.

I'm avoiding hanging out with other mums because I feel like I can't be honest about how awful things are because i typically get met with blank stares so I am isolating in the daytime and don't have anyone to talk to.

I'm mostly breastfeeding so I can't just drink loads of coffee all the time but i have no idea how to stay away all night for these hourly feeds, and putting her back into her next 2 me instead of cosleeping (as per the sleep training recs) It gets to 3am and she's not sleepy any more, she's full of beans kicking her legs and rolling about and trying to play with everything. She's the same at bedtime and it's literally impossible to get her to be calm and sleepy unless I breastfeed her to sleep but all the books say that sleep associations with breast are a bad thing and will result in more night time wakes.

I have ADHD so may be projecting but I think she does too, she's just always wired and nothing works to chill her out.

Anyway sorry for the bummer post, if anyone else is in the same boat and can give me some tips on how to survive this I'd be really grateful.

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So sorry. Are you UK or USA?

UK near London

Send me a message so we can chat, I had this with my first born (hourly wakes) and can empathise about MH currently with my 2nd

(if you want...)

EBF mom here too. I decided to cosleep as it was best for me and baby and my mental health as well as the health of our family overall so that we can all get sleep. Whenever I consume caffeine after 1pm and breastfeed too soon after it messes with my girls sleep schedule. I chose the cosleep route early on as the sleep deprivation was much more dangerous than the cosleep risk. We use bed rails and a mattress on the floor for me and baby.

Have you tried adjusting her light exposures? I had an absolutely terrible time with my first baby's sleep patterns. When pregnant with my second, I came across a book by a sleep researcher that recommended carefully adjusting light exposure to help encourage sleep. We bought blackout curtains so that the room where he sleeps would be as dark as possible at night. Then, I covered my phone flashlight with a piece of red tape so that when he wakes up in the night he's mainly exposed to red light. His sleep is far from perfect, but so far it's been much more manageable than his sister's was at this age. We don't know if it's from that or genetic differences, but it might be worth a try!

Also, that sucks that your friends don't understand! Baby waking up very frequently is pretty common, so idk what's up with the blank stares. You are definitely not alone!

It's so important to get sleep! I hope that you are able to get some rest soon! 💜

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