I thought I’d had my fill of sleep problems with DS1, but it seems that DS2 has a slightly different problem that I need to tackle!
He’s 5 and a half months old, EBF and generally a happy and content baby. He has silent reflux but we are managing it well with medication and he no longer seems to be in any pain. He’s also an ok sleeper at night, once he’s in his cot. At one point about 6 weeks ago he was sleeping from 9 until 4, waking up to feed and then going back down until 7/8 ish. This has recently changed to him waking at 1, then at 4, then at 7/8, feeding back to sleep each time. Could be better, but compared to DS1 who woke every hour and screamed from about 2am onwards I’m pretty happy with it!
The problem is getting him to sleep on an evening. He just doesn’t seem ready to sleep until 9pm. If he falls asleep around 6.30 or 7.00 he wakes 45 mins later and isn’t ready to go back to sleep until 10.00. So it’s basically another nap. I’ve tried putting him into a routine at 7 with low lights, bed clothes, story etc, but after about 4 days he was still waking up after 45 mins, and he also stopped sleeping in his cot at night as well! I must confess this panicked me a bit so I decided to leave it for a bit and try the routine again at another time.
He also seems to wake up straight away if he’s not asleep on me. On the odd occasion that he’s asleep before 9 I can’t put him down or he just wakes up again. But after 10pm he seems happy to sleep in his cot 
I’ve tried different nap schedules, including trying to get him to have a nap at around 4.30/5. If I don’t do this he falls asleep for about 40 mins at around 6.30 and is then up until 10. His naps vary depending on what I’ve got planned for the day, but an average day would be awake by 7.30/8, nap 1 at 10.30 for about an hour, nap 2 at around 1.30 for an hour or two, and nap 3 at 5.00 for about 45 mins. If I’m our with the pram his second nap can be as long as 3 hours, and he won’t always have the later nap if that happens. This seems pretty similar to what DS1 did at the same age.
He’s usually fed to sleep, pushed to sleep in the pram or driven to sleep in the car. He rarely falls asleep on his own in his cot. I know this could be a problem as well, but i think it’s too early to worry about this just yet, as feeding him back to sleep when he wakes at night isn’t a huge issue if he’s only waking once or twice. And he’s still so little!
As he’s still under 6 months I haven’t worried about the late bedtime too much, and as he’s downstairs with us on an evening anyway it has been annoying but not a huge problem (we are following guidelines and not sleeping separately to him for at least 6 months). I also wouldn’t consider any sleep training at this age, and even later on I would only want to go gentle withdrawal sleep training like I did with DS1. I’ve also been wondering if it’s just a body clock thing that will right itself over time, as I know small babies often go to sleep later at the beginning.
However as we get closer to 6 months I’m starting to wonder if I need to be more proactive. I would also like at least a couple of hours during the day without a baby on me! Do I need to reintroduce the routine at 7 and try to force him to slept earlier? Or do I do the routine at 8/8.30 once DS1 is asleep and I finally have some time to relax? I’m worried I’ll just end up spending my whole evening upstairs. Or if it’s a body clock problem do I need to wake him at 6am? It seems totally counter intuitive to wake a sleeping baby, and on bad nights that extra sleep in the morning is helping me to function, but I’m wondering if these ‘lie ins’ are part of the problem?
Or do I wait a bit longer to see if he naturally starts going to sleep earlier by himself?
If anyone has been through similar and has any suggestions I would be very grateful!