4 month old able to fall to sleep independently but wakes up every hour

[Goose4]

My (only just) 4 month old is able to fall to sleep in his cot by himself at bedtime (7:00-7:30pm), but then wakes up frequently throughout the night and needs to be resettled.
He can usually sleep for 2.5-3hrs for the first stretch, but then he wakes up after 60-90 minutes for the rest of the night. He gets fed 3 times overnight (I'm not 100% sure he's super hungry for these feeds, but I have a vague rule of thumb that if it's been less than 3 hours since he fed that we'll resettle him in his cot but if it's been 3 or more then I'll feed him). When he's fed overnight he falls to sleep on the boob (I can't figure out how to stop this happening), but then wakes up when he's put back into his cot and needs some shushing/patting to go back to sleep.
I thought that once babies could fall to sleep by themselves at the beginning of the night, they would be able to link sleep cycles? Or am I completely wrong about that? Is this something he'll learn to do in time, and do I just have to put up with being woken 6-7 times a night until then?
He's never slept for more than 4 hours straight, so I'm not expecting long stretches, but it'd be nice to have slightly fewer wake ups each night!

Hi op, the best place I have ever found for evidence-based info about baby sleep is the website Basis

I would also look at Kellymom
Which has really helpful and again evidenced based info on sleep and nighttime nursing

Should have said kelymom is run by a lactation consultant

I personally fed both my baby completely on demand at night - literally just fed every time they woke and that reduced my waking time and theirs. As I’m sure you know around the 4 month mark lots of babies go through a sleep regression and then sleep starts to improve again

4 months is sleep regression time, so it can be rough even if you are doing everything right. You just have to ride it out. Keep good habits going.

Settling himself is great but not linked to the rest of the night at all.

Is he sleeping more than 3hrs in the day? He may just need less in the day?
Or is he not getting a big enough feed before bed? I feed my LO (10wks) 5pm, 6:30pm and again 7pm. He self settles then, I dream feed at 10pm and we have one feed about 4am. I’ve done this with all 4 of mine and by about 12wks they sleep through. It’s taken longer with no4 as I’ve worked out he needs less sleep than the others did.

Falling asleep while feeding is completely normal and not something to worry about at all - it’s definitely how babies operate

I practised safe bedsharing with mine in the end, following all the safety guidelines, as I didn’t have any risk factors present eg didn’t drink, smoke etc. For our family this was definitely an easier way than trying for resettling etc. Both my two dds had really good sleep as toddlers and still do now they are at school and transitioned really well into their own beds.

Obviously that’s just based on my opinion/experience. I couldn’t do demand feeding personally as it would leave me exhausted and wanting to quit feeding. I know most do but it wasn’t for me

Oh this brought back memories! My DS was exactly the same. He hated being held to go to sleep so he'd settle himself from a really early age but then after an initial couple of hours, would be up every 45 mins to an hour feeding. It was torturous.
The health visitor would only suggest making sure he wasn't fed to sleep - which he wasn't! Or feeding him more during the day, impossible with a breastfed baby if they don't want to feed.
He eventually settled down (at about 12 months) to just 2 feeds a night. At that age he was eating 3 good meals a day and having milk throughout the day too but would still have massive feeds overnight (he was on formula by then and having about double what the books say a 12 month old should have). In the end, I concluded he was just hungry. Nighttime milk is richer than daytime and I think he just needed those calories. He was born on the 25th centile for weight and 98th for height and very rapidly moved up to 75th for weight. He's now 12 and we've often over the years had to consciously feed him up as he hovers on the border of underweight BMI despite eating plenty.

I don't know if I could have done anything which would have helped his sleep more (wasn't one for controlled crying so that was never an option), he just outgrew it himself in the end.

Hi @WoollyFoolly it’s exhausting, isn’t it!! My dd1 was exactly the same at 4 months until I just decided to bed share!

I used to think night time milk was richer and more calorific too, because that’s what I was told by friends, but apparently the latest science doesn’t support that and understanding of hindmilk / fore milk etc has now changed and they say it’s all just milk and fat content only differs slightly Between feeds

[[https://kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/basics/milkproduction-faq/]{

Trying that clicky link

[[https://kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/basics/milkproduction-faq/]

Maybe third time lucky

kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/basics/milkproduction-faq/

4 month sleep regression. No advice but I survived with help from my partner helping me get extra sleep in the morning or weekend.

The only thing that helped was getting my baby into his own room. Once we moved him he started managing 3 hour stretches. Double edge sword as I dreaded moving him due to the wake ups but the wakes up got less once he moved.

I figured we were disturbing his sleep

Ah @Onceuponatimethen that's interesting! (It was kellymom where I got the night time info originally but as I say, he's 12 now so a long while ago!!) guess he was just an awkward bugger then. Good job he's so adorable otherwise.

I'm sure you've checked this op, but are you winding dc properly after a feed overnight? This was a revelation to me, in my sleep deprived haze I just let mine get on with feeding and didn't bother winding once they'd dropped off. A few minutes upright being burped might be worth it?

4 month sleep regression. Keep trying to encourage independent sleep and 'this too shall pass'. 4-5 months were the absolute worst for sleep, but from 6 months we got to 1 wake for a feed per night (with the occasional blip of course). We also used a dummy which helped, although then became another problem down the road!