Baby sleep (or lackof)

[secretsnowsquirrel]

Help. My 4.5 month old went from sleeping 10pm-6am and is now up anywhere from 8 to 12 times a night, everynight, and many times won't be put down again. He also won't sleep longer than 30 minutes during the day, which i'm sure is only making him overtired.

I know this is prime sleep regression territory, but this has been going on about a month now and we are both absolutely exhausted. The internet assures me it's because he can't 'sooth himself' but it's a mystery to me how I help him do that.

How's his feeding during the day @secretsnowsquirrel? Are you managing to get enough feeds on during the day or do you think he's doing a bit of reverse cycling?

He is feeding every 2-3 hours. Often at night he isn't even hungry, so just has a few sips and is asleep again. It's he wakes up, can't settle himself and needs a cuddle. Which is all well and good, but I'm barely getting enough sleep to function.

Ok, so will he sleep in bed with you?

Have you tried a dummy? Is it early teething? Could you try some calpol one night and see if it helps?
You have my sympathy, my first had undiagnosed cmpa for the first 5 months and woke me every hour.

Cosleeping isn’t really a route I want to go down. He does have a dummy but isn’t overly fussed about it, he just spits it out after a few minutes at night. He is definitely teething, dribbling like mad and chewing everything. However calpol doesn’t seem to make any difference unfortunately.

I know why you wouldn't want to start co-sleeping but for us it was the only way we all got any sleep.

As soon as they were in our bed, they sleep and that meant so did we.

The No Cry Sleep Solution is a good book and should help get him more settled if you want to try it.

For self soothing you may just need to wait a few years. It’s not developmental normal for a long time yet.