Feed to sleep or not

[ToTheMoonAndStars]

My DS is 15 weeks old. He's a pretty good chap and we all seem to be getting into the swing of things now.

He is EBF and feeds every 2/2.5 hours during the day.

To get him to sleep he is either fed, rocked, put in his swing or taken out in the buggy. We had a brief period of a week or two where he'd settle in his cot on his own but he doesn't do this anymore! We have tried to encourage him to self soothe but I don't think he's ready as it just hasn't worked.

Until recently he was doing quite well. He'd generally do a good 4 hour stretch first and then only 1 or 2 feeds between 12-7am. It's all gone to pot since xmas though!! After his long first stretch he is waking 3-5 times.

When he wakes in the night he currently rejects everything other than food. It's rather exhausting.

I want a bit of reassurance really that by feeding him back to sleep every time he wakes up I'm not "making a rod for my own back". He'll naturally sleep for longer stretches when he's ready, right?

Part of me thinks we should persevere a bit more with rocking him when he wakes up at night, if he's only been fed an hour or so ago. He only ever feeds for a few minutes before dropping back off again, he's not always 'hungry' hungry, but I know he doesn't feed just for the milk. Thus if it's just comfort he's after can we do this another way (cuddles and rocking).

But then another part of me thinks that if I just feed him quickly and quietly when he stirs, without him really waking up he'll eventually go longer stretches anyway.

We really want to move him into his own room in 2 months time but that seems unrealistic at the moment with the current number of night wakings!!

Any advice or experience?

Sounds like he's hit the four month sleep regression.

Oh really? He was almost 3 weeks early so I thought it would come late?

That said I wasn't dreading the regression as I didn't feel we had much to regress from . We've only had a few nights with decent stretches and he's certainly a long way off 'sleeping through'.

Does sleep tend to improve after it?

If it works, do it! Feeding to sleep is brilliant. They naturally go longer and longer at night (eventually). I don't believe in the rod for your on back thing, absolute nonsense - you can make it easy or you can make it hard (just because it 'might' be hard later on). Crappy logic imo. Make it easy, do what works.

Definitely feed to sleep, theres so much going on developmentally they just need your comfort.
Hopefully things will improve but some babies are just rubbush sleepers until they are older whether fed to sleep or not so save your energy and snuggle up and feed. My DS wouldn't feed to sleep as a newborn, I wish he had it would have made life easier. He did start to for a while then stopped himself when he was ready.

We have just been through the 4 month sleep regression. Like you I thought we didnt have much to regress from, DS was sleeping 7-7 with longer stretch at first and then a feed at midnightish and 3ish. Boy was I wrong, we went to 1 or 2 hourly wake ups all night for 4 weeks solid. The only thing that saved my sanity was not worrying about the future and doing what worked then ... that was feeding to sleep! This week (he is now 20 weeks) we have gone back to normal and have even had 2 nights of only 1 night feed. He also self settled on 2 nights at bedtime and my trying to feed him to sleep almost seemed to overstimulate him.

I think I have now decided to just go with it. There will be good nights and bad nights but they are still only very little ... hopefully things will improve as they get older.