5 month old - feeding to sleep and linking sleep cycles.

[surreygirl1987]

Help! I have a 5 month old. He's lovely but a pretty poor sleeper and I'm not sure if I should be feeding him to sleep.

When I put him to bed at 7pm ish he wakes after one sleep cycle then wants to be awake playing for an hour or so before he finally goes to sleep again. So I've lost my evenings - tonight he went to sleep at 9:30! And his naps are only 45 minutes long unless he's lying in my arms. He also wakes a few times overnight.

I know a lot of this is normal for a 5 month old but my question is... Is it okay to carry on feeding him to sleep or am I going to cause a bad habit and make things mor difficult? And will his sleep cycles link together naturally or only when he's able to self settle? Any advice/experience much appreciated!

This isn't my first baby but my oldest was a really good sleeper despite being fed to sleep so I'm not sure I can make comparisons with him!

[User0ne]

Are you bf? If so it's totally normal for them to wake up for feeds during the night until ~18m and it could be problematic for them if you refuse feeds.

I've no experience of FF

[surreygirl1987]

Yup breastfeeding. I know, as I said I'm aware it's normal, and I have an older child too (, though he actually slept through)... But my question is will feeding him to sleep prevent/delay him from linking his sleep cycles together? Is self settling essential in order to link sleep cycles? The books etc contradict each other but I couldn't find any empirical evidence on the topic...

[JessManc]

I’m not entirely sure but I can tell you my 4 MO is breastfed and sill happily self settle in the day, but I still only feed her sleep through the night. I think she still needs all the milk and she just falls asleep on me naturally. Maybe try self settling for naps then you know he can do it?

We achieved this (by accident) by getting her to sleep in the pram bassinet at first, then when she was used to that we transferred it inside and eventually she just knew that the bassinet & white noise means nap time.