Sleep - what else???

[elwliddle]

I feel like I've broken my baby and not sure how!

We are exclusively breastfeeding on demand. Baby will be 16 weeks in a couple of days.

We were getting him to sleep for between a 4-5hr stretch early evening. Routine of bath then big feed to sleep. He cluster feeds in evening.

By day he was cat napping but would do a big nap if pushed in pram or carried in baby wrap. On occasion we could rock/bounce him to sleep, but he won't often do it.

This past week he will barely sleep for more than an hour at a time. He's getting overtired really quickly. Trying get him to nap is a huge struggle and during night he keeps waking up.

We are co sleeping sometimes (for my sanity) - he's done this before and only woken for one feed in the night. Now about 4 feeds in the night.

He's not windy, temperature seems fine. In wake times he's bright, alert, coming on as he should. He's putting on weight fine (in 6-9 month clothes, weighs 14lb7 a week ago).

I'm praying its just a growth spurt or development stage. But I feel like I've broken him without even realising!

I'm not interested in controlled crying etc, not for us. Suppose I just want to know its normal!

totally normal, google 4 month sleep regression and you'll find lots of parents in a similar boat!

it should only last a short time - the danger is if you set up habits during this phase that then last beyond the short regression phase ... not really sure how you avoid this though!

Thanks minipie. During day I'm trying to set good associations - quiet time and a story, not nursing to sleep. I figure once he's a little older we can establish better night time routines. He nurses to sleep at night but often stirs when I put him down and a shhs and nose stroke usually settles him if not too awake. During night we're feeding back to sleep - he's eating for a good ten to twenty minutes so I'm not convinced its just comfort feeding, he's getting decent amount of food in.

Just typical they when your baby is doing this everyone else's is sleeping for hours! (Or so they say 😀)

all sounds fine to me! (not that i am an expert... dd is an average-to-bad sleeper)

one tip, it's often easier to teach self settling at bedtime than at nap time as they want to sleep more then iyswim. but I know it's hard to stop them falling asleep at that bedtime feed, dd 10 months still often does this!