Hi this is my first post on mumsnet and I wondered if anyone had any advice - apologies for the long post. I have a 16 week old ds he has never been a great sleeper, he woke hourly at night as a newborn and didn't sleep much during the day from 2 weeks old.
His sleep improved a lot around 12 weeks when we started swaddling and he would self settle in his cot with the mobile on for every nap and at night - at that point he was going 5 - 6 hour strectches overnight, going down easily at 7pm and waking around 7 - 7:30. This however only lasted about 2 weeks at which point he started to fight sleep at every nap and i had to go back to feeding to sleep (he is ebf) to avoid him getting OT.
This has affected his night sleep and this has just got worse and worse. He goes down at 7 after bath but will wake 45 min - 1 hour later full of energy and wont resettle until 10 - 11 pm. He still wakes anywhere between 6:30 - 7:30 am. With 3 - 4 wakings in between.
He currently gets around 3 - 4 hours sleep in the day, and i have experimented both with reducing this, and trying to encourage him to sleep more but it has not made a diference. Is this about right for a 4 month old? The timing and length of naps is all over the place. Have tried to get into a routine but it is impossible as he will not go to sleep, even if fed first, unless he is really really tired.
Anyone have any ideas of ways to improve the situation? I'm not expecting him to sttn but would love more than 2 hour stretch of sleep at a time. Also am worried about creating bad habits and that he won't go back to self settling. Should I be working on this, or is it better to just do whatever I can to get him to sleep at the moment?