4 month sleep regression advice

[BeeM1993]

Sorry for the essay in advance!
DS is nearly 5 months and has never been the best sleeper but got better and better until 3 months then it all went to hell! Started waking more frequently, resisting naps, waking after 30-45 mins but I could resettle him fairly easily (he goes to sleep by me patting him while he is in his cot) classic sleep regression stuff. This went on for about 6 weeks and started to improve, started having longer naps of about an hour/hour and a half and having longer stretches at night so we thought we had come out of the other side (hurray!)… Then DS developed a viral infection and things got much worse! We put it down to him being ill but now 2 weeks after it has cleared up his sleep is worse than ever. Naps are basically none existent unless I hold him, he usually goes 1.5hours before needing a sleep but lately he is getting miserable after 1.25 so I try him then but he just screams then wakes after 30-45mins crying and there is no resettling him. At bedtime he now wakes after 2 and a half hours of going down and is awake every 45mins/2 hours until we get up in the morning (he is mainly breastfed to sleep at bedtime). If I try and resettle him by patting him he wakes after 45 mins and takes an age to settle but if I feed him he lasts 2 hours before waking again and wanting another feed. I guess what I’m asking is should I feed after every wake even though he used to go 6 hours without a feed? Or am I creating ‘bad habits’? At nap times should I try and lengthen them by holding him or again am I creating ‘bad habits’? Should I shorten his awake windows if he is so miserable I assume from being overtired? So hard to know what to do for the best being a FTM and just wanted to know your experiences.

Definitely feed him back to sleep if that works.

Don't worry that feeding to sleep is a bad habit, it's not, especially as young as 4 months. It's completely biologically normal

Thank you for your response

If he's needing the calories every 2h through the night, then he must be running at a significant calorie deficit from the daytime. I'd me massively focusing on upping daytime calories - bigger feeds and much more frequently during daytime hours.

If the 2 hourly feeding overnight is for comfort rather than calories, then not helping him learn ways to comfort without milk will make life harder in the future if you hope for him to sleep independently.

Awake windows I would always err towards less awake time and more sleep is better. So no issue with keeping wake windows short if they need to be.

He has a feed every time he wakes from a nap and as he is taking more, shorter naps he is having more feeds in the day normally for about 20-30 mins.

The ultimate goal is to have him fall asleep independently, something he can’t do yet. I worry about creating a feed to sleep association but he doesn’t do this for naps so I know he can fall to sleep with just patting but this last week or so that’s not been working as well!

Last night was slightly better only waking every 3 hours for a feed, put down at 8 after a big feed (45mins), woke at 9 patted back to sleep, woke at 11:30 fed for 30 mins, woke at 1 but self-settled, woke at 3 fed for 30 mins, woke at 6 fed for 20 mins then up at 7:30. I don’t mind feeding him at this times as it seems he really needed it since he had decent feeds every time and settled back into his cot well after these so maybe it’s a growth spurt?