4 month old insomniac!

[InternationalMuslinMountain]

Our 4 month old EBF DS appears to survive on very little sleep. He barely naps (and when he does it is rarely for more than 40 mins although we do get the occasional 'proper' 1-2hrs). He also naps almost exclusively on me. He is wide awake until at least 11pm, when he conks out after a feed. I wouldn't be bothered if he didn't wake to feed every 2 hours overnight. He will sleep from 6-7ish through until 9-10am which is at the wrong time really... I have tried moving his bedtime gradually forward but he's having none of it. Any advice or suggestions (or even reassurance that I'm not completely messing it all up!) gratefully received - I'm rather tired!

Waking to feed every two hours is unfortunately fairly normal at 4 months, as is napping for 40 minutes (despite what the books might tell you).

If he is not getting up till 10am, then unfortunately it's not surprising that he isn't going to bed till 11pm. If you want to pull his bedtime forward, you need to start getting him up earlier - babies that go to bed at 7pm usually get up at 7am. Losing the lie in won't be nice though!

Thanks for your advice. We are planning to move his wake up forward (although its not previously made a difference but its always been a one off early wake up in the past so planning to wake him early for more than one day instead). It's nice to hear the feeding is normal as I seem to be surrounded by people with babies of the same age or younger who sleep for 3,4 or even 7 hours overnight! They all look at me horrified when I say he wakes every 2 hours and my mum keeps hinting I should wean him which is driving me potty

My DD slept sometimes for 7 hours when she was younger than your baby. It all went to pot at 4 months - it's called the 4 month sleep regression, a well known point for sleep to go wrong. So those younger babies may well start waking more frequently yet!

You can try to encourage less feeding at night by trying to stuff more milk into him during the day - at 4 months they start getting nosy about the world around them and so feed less in the day as they want to be doing other things which can be one reason they feed more at night. Also, it's a big developmental stage so their brains are working overtime and this usually leads to more disturbed sleep (another time for sleep being the pits is when they are starting to figure out how to crawl). It should get better!

If the night wakings are getting too much, can you rope your DH in to help? Your baby might not need feeding every time he wakes and if your DH can settle him back to sleep once or twice then at least that would be a bigger chuck of sleep for you.

Thanks. Think we were being a bit optimistic really as he has always cluster fed in the evenings (apologies, should have mentioned this in the original message). Thought he had stopped but actually he has just slowed down a bit in retrospect. I think the real issue is that I'm just feeling a bit judged by friends and family members lately... and it's making me think I should be going in hard with the routines and bedtimes when actually we do already have a routine (of sorts).

We have been getting him up a bit earlier (8-8.30 am) and this seems to be resulting in some day time sleeps.

Think I am just going to go with the flow for now. Plus the cuddles in the evening are pretty good.