Five months in… when does it get easier?

[2025a]

DS is breastfed on average every 1 hr 30 mins over 24 hours, for a total of over three hours a day. Apparently he should be going between feeds for 3-4 hours now! When does it get easier?

He contact naps, always has done as he hated being put down. Nowadays it’s because 9 times out of 10 he’ll wake up on the transfer. I do wonder sometimes if I could try putting him down more but then I think “he’ll probably wake up… he needs a good sleep…” so I keep him in my lap.

So I’m holding him for a large portion of the day, one way or another.

We co-sleep because again from birth he would scream in the cot. I have tried putting him in the Snuzpod a few times and I might get nine minutes or I might get 30. The problem is it gets to bedtime and I’m so tired, I think ‘I don’t have energy to fight the crib battle tonight,’ so I lie him down next to me as at least I know l’ll get one two-hour block that way.

DH is very hands on but has a job that requires a lot of at-home prep. So there are some weeks when I’m continuing to have to hold DS all evenings.

When does it get easier? I’m considering introducing a bottle in the evening to give me a break. I know FF babies don’t sleep better than BF ones. But I just need a break. I am so tired!

My daughter was like this at 4 months she was in my arms 23h a day. At 4.5 months she was diagnosed with severe silent reflux and cmpa which turned out to be over 20 allergies which she was reacting to me eating. Once she was on high dose omperazole and I was removing her allergens from my diet she started to be able to be out of my arms when awake and naps in the pram were possible. She still contact napped if napping in the home. Around 7 months i could slide her off me and lie her next to me in the bed. I still had to stay with her but at least I had my arms free!

Did she have any symptoms? DS is putting on weight a-plenty, nappies are fine, skin is fine etc?

Just to add that you try anything to make your life easier. For me personally I didn't cope breastfeeding so only managed a week and we moved to bottle so that DH could help a bit. Don't feel bad about co sleeping, again you do what you need to to survive. Something that people say which is totally true and helped me was that everything is a phase so none of this will last forever. When you're in the thick of it it helps to remember that.

Main symptom at diagnosis was being unsettled all day and not being out my arms she had a development delay at 4 months too - not responding to sounds and not smiling.
We had a few feeding issues which were later identified as a symptom and it turned out she did have slower growth - she had been following a line but moved up nearly 2 percentiles after removing dairy from my diet. We also later realised that her poos were loose and mucusy.

Have you seen your HV recently? It could be a touch of silent reflux

My LO is now 9 months. It DOES get easier, and for us it got easier around six and a half months.

A couple of things - breastfed babies don't necessarily go 3-4h. I was combination feeding and only got this long break after a formula bottle. Particularly as LO slept better at night, daytime breast feeds stayed close together to pack the calories in. LO woke at night at least once for BF around 2am and sometimes again at 5am at that age.

Weaning helps (depending on how fast your baby takes to it), you can feed them Readybrek with eg peanut butter in the evening to help fill them up for sleep.

I used to breastfeed on waking and again before first nap - when I switched to breastfeeding then solid breakfast then nap, that helped LO sleep longer for nap one of the day.

You can at this point structure their naps a bit more. So nap one would be in the cot and had a routine - sleepy cues (eye rubbing about 2h after waking), breastfeed, put in sleeping bag awake, short story, kiss baby, then shush pat to sleep (or walk out and let them fuss but not cry). If not asleep after 15 minutes, try again in half an hour.

Gradually, between 5 and 6.5 months, that first nap extended from 30 mins to 1h. Sometimes I had to go in and resettle 35 mins in, but increasingly LO could self- settle. I did nothing different, baby just got older.

There was a super stressful period dropping from 3 to 2 naps when baby was sleep deprived and 4-6.30pn every day would be hell. But once the morning nap lengthened, then I could push the afternoon nap back, and then it didn't matter if it was only 30 mins.

Afternoon naps took longer to transition from contact/feed to sleep, to cot/pram. So don't worry, that's totally normal.

I watched the entirety of New Amsterdam on Netflix over the course of contact naps...

You are in the trenches but it WILL get better, seven if you do nothing.

Oh bless you OP, that's one of the hardest baby ages! It does get easier, I promise. Until then, just do whatever makes life easier and ignore anyone who dare says anything about rods and backs.

My DD was a horrible sleeper. It gradually got a little easier over the months, although there was no magic age it all fixed. Weaning onto food did help a little bit on her appetite for BF though.

It will get easier, and you will slowly find you get used to it too. Over the months tiredness becomes something you don't notice as much :-)

I think the cosleeping makes perfect sense and tbh I'd just lean into it rather than fighting the crib battle. But re: weaning, I'd be tempted to start slowly now tbh rather than going to formula... many, many countries start weaning before 6 months and some doctors are now recommending earlier anyway to help reduce risk of allergies.

How are the poos? No possibility of allergies?

Yes - My little baby was exactly like yours, she would feed every hour and a half and cosleep because she only slept with contact. This all got a little bit better with weaning at 6 months, and now at 7 months she bf every 2-3 hours, and her naps are much longer (I usually take her out for long walks in the pushchair and she sleeps). She can go for 2 hours in the cotbed before waking up at night and I put her with me to sleep in the bed.

It got a little easier every month, but I agree that 5 months was tough because my baby was constantly bf and hungry and woke up a lot more.

I would say it gets ‘easier’ when they get mobile, but it all switches then and you suddenly never get to sit down again. Watch tv and read books and try to find a way to make the most of it, because you will miss the sitting down all the time when it goes (it’s so much more exhausting when you’re on your feet all day).

I would, if you haven’t, move in the direction of making sure you can do naps in the pushchair and the car. Neither of mine ever napped in a cot. It was on me or out and about. It means you won’t get trapped at home all day.

1.5 hourly feeds isn’t particularly uncommon. My 4 month olds were definitely not going 3-4 hours, that’s more for ff babies. Work on using a sling if you can. Dh needed to work in the evenings and I would just hand them off to him when he got home and he’d work with them in the sling. It meant I got a break all evening to eat, shower, sleep, do whatever.

Thanks everyone it’s so nice to read your messages.

I do get out of the house every other day, sometimes more. I find it a huge hassle - have to get the pram out of the car (on street parking!), get his pram suit on, make sure he’s changed, make sure a feed is the very last thing we do, making sure any crying has stopped, making sure we have sterilised dummies just in case, getting myself ready/dressed and of course the biggy - needing to work backwards to make sure that the time we leave the house for the walk is nap time! If he wakes up at the ‘wrong’ time in the morning then we’ve had it if I’ve got a ‘timed’ appointment that day that is at the ‘wrong’ time.

Often meeting up with another mum for brunch or going to a sensory session etc is more stress/hassle than it’s worth. And it often means he has much shorter - or no - naps.

We went out today, his nap on the way there was curtailed (due to arriving at the cafe so the movement stopping), while there and on the way back he didn’t sleep at all, so he was grizzly when he got home. We’re now dealing with the after effects of that as it meant it was 3.5 hours until he went down for his next nap.

I'm afraid I needed that space. So stopped bf at three months, never ever ever co slept and went back to work pt at 4-5 months. Felt 1000% better. Twenty years on and no regrets. I wasn't prepared to endure each day so outsourced a chunk of it.
Sorry, probably not helpful. It's really tough.

Bottle feed and get yourself a sling so you can go about your day while they sleep on you.

Babies are shit basically. I loved 18 months + but at least at 6 months you're physically a bit better after birth and baby is a bit more predictable.

Personally I ditched the concept of naps. I hated being tied to any kind of schedule, I just went out and baby slept if he/she needed it in the sling or pram. I walked a lot just to get out.

If you park on the street get a pram you can keep in the house. We got a YoYo because of our on street parking and complete lack of storage. I used to hang it off the coathooks in the hallway. So much easier than carrying everything to the car then trying to get the pram out of the boot whilst holding the baby!

I’d also start weaning. NHS advice is around 6 months not no younger than 6 months so I’d say you’re basically there. It’s way more effective at filling them up than formula. But nothing wrong with trying a bottle at bedtime, probably won’t improve sleep on its own but at least it means you can have an early night or even go out whilst your partner does bedtime. Getting a break helps massively.

Dummies don’t need to be sterilised for a healthy 5MO FYI. It’s important with bottles because leftover milk residue that you might have missed washing up can grow really nasty bacteria but dummies don’t go near milk so they’re fine to be washed normally- the same as bowls/spoons for weaning, their hands, toys etc. no need to sterilise any of that. It’s only a small thing I know but it’s a small thing you don’t need to worry about!

Also get a rockit for the pram! Lifesaver for when you stop anywhere like at a cafe.

But it does get easier. Their sleep needs drop a bit around 6 months and you become less of a slave to the nap routine. Eating proper meals hopefully means better sleep or even just a break for you as you don’t need to always be there to feed.