4.5 month old, early evenings and dream feeds...

[BrainGoneAwol]

DP has friends with babies who talk about them being asleep by 7pm* then having a dream feed at 10pm before then settling for the night. We are currently starting our bedtime routine at 8pm with DS feeding and falling asleep on me before transfer which means he is going to bed at 10pm for the night.

DP has suggested we try to aim for the 'in bed by 7pm' schedule. I am not sure that DS is able to do this at 4.5 months as I am not sure he will settle so early and I don't want to then just have him up in the morning starting the day at a ridiculous hour.

Some other info - he currently wakes every 2-3 hours. He used to wake less (1-2 times in the night) but we have recently moved him to his own room/cot which is taking a bit of getting used to. He does not nap very well during the day (though will sleep for hours if allowed to on us which we try to avoid unless he is ill) and is usually getting cranky by 7.30pm. He's also ebf and refuses to take a bottle - it just dribbles out of his mouth

I realise that all babies are different, but is moving his bedtime to 7pm feasible at this age? We do not want to do CC as he just works himself up into a sweating, screaming state and nor does he respond to pupd for the same reason. What is other people's experience of going to bed earlier but doing a cream feed at this age?

TVM

*times approximate

It's definitely feasible - that's about when I moved my DS's bedtime with some positive results. If your DS is getting cranky by 7:30pm I'd say he's getting overtired, which may be part of the reason he's waking frequently (in addition to the four month sleep regression) which an earlier bedtime may help.

Can't comment on a dream feed, sorry. Never done one. If my DS has miraculously managed to stay asleep from 7pm until 10pm, I'm sure as hell not going to wake him up!! (Especially as I'll probably be trying to cram some sleep in myself.)

I agree with elphaba, at that point DS went to bed around 6pm and he still does at 8mo. He only has two naps during the day though, of about 2 hours total.

Oh, at 4mo sleep goes horrendous, google 4 month sleep regression. At that point DS was waking roughly every 2 hours all night...

Thanks for the replies, we had the sleep regression, which was a joyous 1.5 weeks . At least I hope that was it!

Can I ask how often yours wake/woke in the night and what time their mornings start?

You really, honestly don't want to know. I think my DS's first words will be, 'sleep is for the weak'.

It's all a bit hazy tbh-basically until DS was 5 months old he would only nap on the move, and had to be fed to sleep. He also woke every 2 hours. The first thing I changed was to give him some formula at bedtime, (i know it is controversial, and i have no idea how much it helped) I also used to change his nappy mid-feed to wake him up a bit and make him take more at that feed, as he was a snacker. I also found that wrapping him in slightly more layers helped and making the room a bit warmer. I think he got cold in the wee small hours and so would wake up more. By 6mo he was generally waking twice a night, but never at the same times. Then by 7 months it was usually once a night, and now at 8 months he sometimes sleeps through, more often not. So with us it was gradual improvement. His current routine has been the same since 5 months old:
7am - wake up
9am - nap (45 mins)
12.45pm - nap (1 hr 15mins)
5.30pm - bath
6pm - bed

PS-a lot of people have a longer pm nap and bedtime at 7pm, but early bedtime suits us so we've stuck with it.

teacher that sounds just like me so far...
elphaba