I know this topic has been done to death but it has just appeared to hit us this week......
DS is 16 weeks and usually a good sleeper. We did bedtime routine and bed around 8. He has often been difficult to settle initially and we used to let him drop off to sleep in a swing with white noise before transferring to his cot. However once asleep at 8ish we used to dream feed at 10.30/ 11 and then he'd wake for a feed around 4am, and 7am. He always settled immediately after the dream feed and 4 am (ie fed to sleep), and had more or less dropped the 4 am feed. He has never self settled though.
However, In the last week this has completely changed. He is waking hourly through the night and sometimes settling quite quickly with our help (shushing patting dummy) but sometimes crying hysterically for hours. I don't feed him every time as i don't think he's hungry having previously dropped the 4 am feed. When he's hysterical I offer the breast but he sucks briefly then just starts crying again. Last night I tried bringing him into bed with us when we were on our 3rd wake up at 1 am - he slept fitfully for a couple of hours but then became unsettled again and we ended up back In the swing until morning to get some sleep. I really don't want him sleeping In This at night as I'm sure it's not good for him (similar to car seat which they say should be max 2hours at a time).
So my questions are, how long is this likely to last, and is there anything we can do to help him sleep/ settle better? I feel at 4 months he's still too young for any sleep training really.... Thanks in advance.