Sleep Training a 5 month old

[mamavee]

Desperate for some advice on sleep training my 20 week old. We're really lucky and he self settles for naps since day dot (sometimes with a dummy, sometimes without). He will also self settle for bedtime - as long as he's looking tired when we put him down; so we tend to put him down after the last feed of the day but whilst he's still awake (varies from 7.30pm-9pm).
He doesn't really cry at night but sort of moans and whinges and wrestles around his cot (it's in our room). Probably sleeps for little stretches of 1-2 hours then does that again until you hold the dummy back in or feed him.
He wants to feed once or twice a night too.
We've tried the Tracey Hogg method of a dream feed between 10-11pm to help him go longer but it doesn't seem to make a difference.
Would love to hear what's worked for you with a baby of a similar age.
Thank you!

Sleep training isn’t recommended before 6 months. I’d wait at least another month. Weaning may also help if he’s a hungry baby!

However, the following helped us at around 5 months and we never needed to resort to sleep training:
-making sure she had enough feeds and naps during the day
-consistent bedtime routine (in our case bath at 6.30pm, bottle then straight to bed at 7pm)
-dreamfeed when we went to bed (around 10-11pm)
-moving DD to her own room as we were all disturbing each other (I know this is not recommended before 6 months but it worked best for us)
-ignoring any whinging or wriggling unless it escalated into actual crying, 99% of the time she went back to sleep herself

He's 20 weeks old, you can't force it. You've either got one that sleeps or one that doesn't. Grin and bear it at this stage.

I agree with the PP tips and general advice about things you could try at this stage. My baby is a month older than yours and I was also wondering last month about whether to try controlled crying - in the end I decided not to and did shhh pat method instead. This seemed to work without too much trouble and he's mostly been sleeping really well for the last month. I fully expect ups and downs with his sleep still, but for now it's going well and it seemed to change the weekend I started the shhh pat sleep training method.

Good luck with whatever you decide! sleep deprivation is so hard.

I think feeding during the night is still perfectly normal for a 5 month old. It sounds like the waking is because he's lost his dummy and needs you to put it back in to resettle? If that's the case you might need to work on him falling asleep without a dummy so that when he's waking during the night he's not expecting it to be in his mouth. I have read the Lucy Wolfe sleep book and found it really useful.

That all sounds pretty normal my 2.5 year old still wakes in the night lol
I think with time your baby will probably sleep right through no problems as it sounds like u already have a good sleeper to me

U could put a few dummies in his cot or get one of those dummy's on a teddy so it's easier for him to find

I have a five month old and I think you have a really good sleeper to be honest! What do you want to happen? It’s normal for a baby that age to wake at night and two night feeds is pretty normal. The fact he can nap and sleep by being put down sleepy but awake is amazing - most parents would give their right arm for that!