5.5 month old what's going on?

[sleepycat13]

ds is now 5.5 months old. he has never been a great sleeper although there have been periods of better and worse sleep however overall pattern on a goodish night has been bed about 10pm (after cluster feeding all evening with few power naps) wake at 1 ish for feed lasting about half hour and then waking every 1.5 ish hours after that. this I can cope with

over the last month the cluster feeding has been easing off a bit, but he has also been rather fussy in the evenings and seeming quite tired so we have been trying to push bedtime forward a bit. managed to get him to sleep now for about 8.30 / 9 ish. but bedtime has also become a drama. he screams when you change him, he has started crying in the bath and most nights he won't have a story either. he just wants boob.

the bit I'm struggling with though is what's happening in the nights. he is no longer having a long stretch of 3 ish hours at the start of the night and instead is waking hourly or so from the start. he is also becoming increasingly hard to put down in his crib in the night and frequently wakes as soon as I lay him down.

I end up co sleeping but this doesn't really work either as he fidgets lots and we end up both waking each other up more often.
I feed him to sleep and can't put him down awake as he just gets very upset.

last night dh ended up taking him for a drive and then he slept for 4 hours in the car seat on the bedroom floor. not ideal! but I was desperate. he woke when I went to the bathroom and then it was the usual story the rest of the night.

does anyone have any ideas what the matter might be or what might help?

Sounds overtired at bedtime, which would suggest more daytime sleep is needed. If baby is still awake 90 minutes after last waking in the daytime, get him back to sleep. Awake time wants you be 60-90 minutes until naps are consistently over 90m long. If bedtime is 8.30-9pm ish, I'd be expecting baby to have last slept up to 7pm ish. Is baby spending too long awake?

In terms of nights, now baby is more aware, it becomes necessary for baby to go to sleep in the place they stay asleep. If not natural instincts kick in ancient wake baby us. Transferring an already asleep baby is the wrong thing you do.

This is why many parents end up cosleeping when they didn't expect to. If you are going to feed to sleep then the place baby needs to stay asleep is next to you. If you want baby to sleep in a cot, it means not feeding to sleep and finding a way to help baby to learn to go from awake to asleep in the cot.

Actually, it's not the "wrong thing to do" to transfer an already asleep baby. It's just that it is not conducive to good quality sleep because of the environment checks humans do while asleep.

generally he does tend to have several short half hour ish naps every couple of hours throughout the day including up to 7-7.30 pm depending on overall bedtime unless he has a much longer nap at somepoint in the day. overtiredness is sometimes an issue but I tend to be able to spot when it's getting that way and encourage him to have a nap if needed ideally before overtiredness happens.

I get what your saying about the feed to sleep issue I just don't really know how else to get him to sleep. he will occasionally be rocked but if I lay him down awake he just gets worked up. he won't take a dummy. do you have any suggestions?