5 month old sleep

[Ilovetea42]

So I know my ds (5 months) is having a bit of a developmental leap. He's feeding at least hourly, waking lots during the night and he is massively struggling to nap during the day. Everything is interesting to him. Even if it's simply the blanket he's meant to be napping under. I have tried putting him in the car with the hood of the car seat right down (he just peeks out under it which is both adorable and frustrating!), out in the pram, in darkened quiet room, napping on me and I'm having no success with any of it. When he doesn't nap during the day, it's much harder to get him down at night because he goes past himself and he'll go over but wake every few minutes and need continuous resettling. The only way he will sleep is literally with my nipple in his mouth but when he goes over his latch weakens and it gets painful for me so I usually try to swap to dummy at that point.

Does anyone have any tips? At the minute he's waking at 1, 3, 6 and then wakes for the day at 7 and he feeds for about an hour each time so I'm very keen to nap or at least rest when he does because I'm starting to struggle with the 3am and 6am feedings and have dozed off with him a few times. Dh is now staying awake to watch me feed but he has long days in an intense job so it's not really ideal for him to be awake for it either. It's been just over a week now with the night waking and I do think that's developmental, but the daytime nap refusal I think it's pure nosiness.

Sounds really tough @Ilovetea42 but why is your DH staying awake for the feeds?

I'd be tempted to give DS the one and three am feeds then when he wakes at 6, get DH to take him downstairs to give him breakfast. If DH can spend an hour watching you feed he might as well be giving you a bit of time to get ready for the day

Sorry should have said ds is ebf and currently is refusing cups and bottles from everyone and has been for a few weeks now. He's staying awake because I'm falling asleep so he's making sure I don't doze off with ds in the bed with us as we don't usually co sleep.

That sounds tough with being up for an hour. It's not uncommon for my 9 month old to be up at midnight, 3, 6 and 7am, although the feeds are mostly a lot quicker with one of maybe an hour. Have you considered cosleeping or at least making the bed safe so that if you do fall asleep with your baby it's not a problem? There are many guides on safe cosleeping online. I think at 5 months, being up those times in the night is fairly normal. We coslept and then DS took her downstairs at 7am so I could sleep until 8. If you have a cot, a few friends of mine had success taking the side off and attaching it to the bed to feed with baby in there so the baby is in its own space. I've fallen asleep many times feeding my baby and have found it a very useful tool to coach her to go back to sleep and also to stop waking up so much to feed. Now, if she starts walking me up for a feed at midnight I start feeding her and then just purposely fall asleep. She'll then just go back to sleep on her own until the next feed and usually stop waking me up at that time after a couple of days.

DH took DS downstairs! 😅

I would look up safe bed sharing guidelines in that case. Like the PP said, you'll all probably sleep more if you feed him lying down in bed at night.

As for the naps, the No Cry Nap Solution might help you. I know that mine always slept better at night if they weren't overtired

The 4 month regression is a killer. We put my DD on a nap schedule around this time (Huckleberry is good for this) which worked a bit but I think it’s just a phase that they have to pass through. It did get better eventually though and I found white noise really helpful. And treating having low expectations and posh coffee for myself the next day.