Feeding to sleep / 4 month regression

[Crazydiamond106]

My daughter is 5 months old and we’ve been experiencing the 4 month sleep regression (waking at every sleep cycle) since around 3.5 months!!

The longest she sleeps in one go at the moment is 2 hours but it’s quite often 1.5 hours or even 45 mins! I exclusively breastfeed and I do try to put her in the next to me for and sing or shush her to sleep. However she still feeds to sleep all through the night..she only has 2 proper / hungry feeds in the night the the rest tend to be 5 min comfort sucking to drop off.

Do I need to stop feeding to sleep in the night and instead try put her down awake after she’s fed ..or does anyone have any experience of feeding to sleep and things just getting better on their own? I’m fine with night wakings but was hoping for only a couple at this stage...not 5-7!

Baby sleep isn't linear and does get worse as well as better.- this is well within the realms of normal.

Feeding to sleep is natural, and contains hormones that help baby go back to sleep. Why would you do something that takes longer and is more stressful and wakes you up properly rather than a few minutes and then back down?

Yes DS fed at night, and probably often til gentle night weaning at almost 2 but when combined with bed sharing, I barely woke up for many months of that.

His sleep is hugely better now but I wasn't willing to do anything to upset him (call me a hippy dippy mum if you like) so have never sleep trained.

He's not perfect now but it is manageable

Do you have a partner who can help? We did the following...

We worked out how long she could go without feeding during the day (3hrs). If she woke within 3 hours, DH settled her. If it had been more than 3 hours, i fed her back to sleep. Worked really well and meant that when i got sick of spending 40minutes feeding her to sleep every nap and night time (about 6m) she was used to settling without it, and it only took a week or so for her to be able to go down awake and fall asleep by herself.