Unusual nighttime sleep newborn

[HazelOrca]

My son is 11 weeks old and since 7 weeks his sleep took a turn for the worse.
he has never ‘slept through the night’ but prior to 7 weeks would have 3 or 4 hour stretches and occasionally 5 hour stretches at night.
at the moment he goes down at 10 and will wake at 11;45-12 (no more than 2 hours), I will feed and re/settle him (which can take multiple attempts) and he normally will sleep 2-4. After 4 he is harder to put down and the past few nights I have just held him while he sleeps.
I am seeing so many people whose babies are sleeping through the night at this point and this kind of sleep pattern is very early for 4 month regression. I’m really struggling with lack of sleep and feel like I’m doing something wrong. I’m EBF.

You’re not doing anything wrong at all OP! My baby is nearly 9 months now and still doesn’t sleep through the night! Some babies just don’t, some don’t until they’re much older, 11 weeks is still very small. It will all come with time x

All I can say is this is not unusual. This is quite normal and baby is still very young. I also don't really buy into the whole developmental leaps and sleep regression stuff because nothing different happened with mine at the times they were supposed to. We are at 18 months and I can count on 1 hand the times they've slept through. Lots of people like to brag about babies sleeping through the night but in reality frequent waking is an evolutionary safety mechanism that reduces the risk of SIDS and means baby feeds enough and grows well.

Make sure your bed is set up safely for cosleeping as if you're holding baby from 4am there is a chance you might fall asleep with them even if you don't plan to. And try to go to sleep when baby does first thing in the evening to get as much sleep as you can. It will only be for a short time, in another couple of weeks everything might flip again.

Really normal OP! If anything, perhaps he lulled you in to a false sense of security with those long stretches in the very early weeks. My (now toddler) DC would wake every 2-3 hours until 4m sleep regression, which led to wakes every 1-2 hours until we sleep trained at 10m. There is a huge range of normal baby sleep, some lucky buggers get one on the sleepier end of the spectrum - others (like me) aren't so lucky haha.

Don't worry, it's nothing you are doing wrong! Hell go longer stretches again. I find it helpful to think we'll they are just small humans at the end of the day and so it makes sense some sleep better than others as I know that's true in adults.

It's hard though, I remember those trenches. It will pass, you will sleep again.

I think you simply got very lucky early on. Neither of my babies ever slept more than 1.5-2 hour stretches before 8/9 weeks. Unless maybe Dh carried them in circles around the lounge trying to get me an extra hour of sleep here and there. I don’t know any babies honestly who were regularly sleeping 3-5 hours before 7 weeks. It sounds like you are just catching up on what’s normal now. There’s a lot of development going on. It could be a bit of a cold that you didn’t really notice but disrupted the usual sleep pattern. It could be too hot/cold or very likely picking up on all the stress and busyness of Christmas.

It’s normal. You aren’t doing anything wrong. Just make sure you get sleep when you can. It will likely get easier again before 6 months hits (which is a doozie for sleep!), so don’t rest on your laurels. Go to bed and sleep so you’re ready for the next one.

Completely agree with other posters Op, you are doing nothing wrong and I’d say you’re actually in the majority rather than minority. 11 weeks is still very young. We are at the other end of the spectrum with a 21 month old that has still never slept through once! So there is a huge range of normal

All normal OP.

Don’t forget that your baby doesn’t know what he ‘should’ be doing according to other mums, baby ‘experts’ or random people on the internet.

I agree with the others you are not doing anything wrong. Those few people who are lucky to have their babies sleeping long stretches from early age should not be used to feel like you are failing. Just make sure your baby is fed when he is hungry and his sleeping will mature as he ages. It's hard and exhausting but he will grown out of it.

Completely normal baby sleep I'm afraid. As exhausting as it is.