Encouraging 6mo to sleep longer stretches

[CastleTower]

How would you encourage a 6 month old to sleep longer stretches?

From a week old or so to four months, he slept in 3 hour chunks at night. Now, from four months to six months he's been sleeping in 90 minute chunks. Occasionally he does 2 hours.

He goes down well at bedtime and naps, and he's usually fairly quick to resettle, either with a quick feed (not every time) or a cuddle or just replacing his dummy. I had been co-sleeping for some of the night to make it easier, but (a) it's not my favourite anyway, (b) he's outgrown the snuzpod and (c) he's not resettling well being right next to me any more for some reason.

He's happy enough to go down in his cot at bedtime, sometimes need a quick extra cuddle. But by the early hours I'm exhausted.

I think he probably needs 2-3 feeds to be comfortable, but is there any way to encourage him to sleep longer between those? Everything I read seems to assume that once babies self-settle at bedtime they'll do so all night!

Any suggestions gratefully received, we're tired 🙃

The average age for babies to start linking sleep cycles is 9months. So before this, the vast majority will briefly wake every 90minutes/2 hours. The idea is that if they self-settle at bedtime they MAY resettle with these wakings.

I hear that many do. None of mine did.

You have a variety of sleep training techniques out there if you want to try them. Have to admit I never bothered with mine, but it depends how disruptive the wakings are to you what you're prepared to try.

You mabhave some luck tweaking daytime schedule and habits. Do you want to give some detail on a typical day?

Thanks - so much of "sleep training" focuses on bedtime not the middle of the night.

Here's what we did yesterday.

6.30am - up for the day, take big sis to nursery etc

8.15am - feed
8.30am - nap, 1hr30 mins
Up at 10am.
Out for walk in the pushchair etc.

12pm - feed
12.15 - nap, 45min
Went to supermarket, played at home

1.30pm ish - feed, as seemed grouchy

2.15 - feed and nap, 2 hours
4.15 - up (had to wake to pick up sister )

6.30 - bedtime routine, feed
6.50 - said goodnight, went in twice to reassure
7.00 - asleep

Wake-ups: 10pm, 12.15pm, 2.30am, 4.30am, 5.30am.
Resettled quickly with feeding/dummy each time except 4.30am, when he needed a long cuddle.

6.30am - up for the day

Naps are a mix of feed to sleep, dummy or neither.