How to get 4mo to nap better and sleep better in early hours?

[Bluepolkadots42]

Think I've hit a wall. My 4mo will sleep well from 7pm to 1.30 then have a feed and nappy change. Sometimes its more of a dream feed.
They will go back down at 2am without a dummy as have always fallen asleep feeding.
They will then start thrashing around and grunting, sometimes waking and cooing anytime from 4 30am. On a good day its 5.30. I am then awake from that moment onwards because I give them the dummy to get them back off to sleep (which works) but they continually drop it from their mouth as frequently as every 5mins and wake again as soon as it drops so I have to replace. So although I am able to stretch their sleep til 6 30 I am not benefitting at all. This has been going on for 6 weeks now.
I am so sick of having to go to bed stupidly early just so I can get a decent chunk of sleep and then sick of being awake from 4 30/5 every morning. I do appreciate i am lucky to have that option and that many babies will still be waking every 2-3 hours still at this age but right now that feels little consolation.

Naps are a total shit show. They do anything from 4 to 7 naps a day depending on how long they are. Most are 35 mins. I can count on one hand the times they've napped independently for longer than 40 mins. I know the naps will be impacting night sleep. Most days I have to do a rescue nap for final nap of day and hold them so they nap longer and scrape into 3 hours total nap time. I cannot hold them like that for every nap because I have school runs to do and an older one. Even sling naps and car naps are rarely longer than 35 mins. I've tried it all.

Please has anyone got advice?

It doesn't sound abnormal to me sorry and in fact pretty good for the four month leap! 35 minute naps can still be very restorative and enough to reduce the sleep pressure. Can you take it in turns to be up resettling baby from 2-5 so whoever does that shift then gets to sleep 5-7.30 and you swap? We still do a lot of shifts at 10m because baby has never slept longer than two hours.

I agree that it sounds pretty normal! Would a feed at 4:30 work better than dummy? Also do you have blackout blinds? 4.30 it will be getting light so if you don't, room will be getting brighter.

This sounds like hell OP and I've been through it!! We had waking every 1-2hrs after midnight and then I'd hold him after about 4am as he wouldn't go back in the cot, was squirming about. Also had 30min naps.

I've just posted on another thread about getting baby to fall asleep on their own which made the frequent wakes a lot better. It does sound like yours may have a tummy issue? I suspect we did too and I cut out dairy from my diet and once weaned gave him oat milk. Is definitely not an allergy but perhaps a mild intolerance or he was full of wind/ silent reflux.

Check out the parent and baby coach on Instagram she also does a podcast.

Here's the response I posted yesterday if that helps too.
I got my DS self settling when he was about 6mo. I did it in a few stages.

From about 4.5mo I started introducing a comforter all the time. Nappy changes, in the pram, when feeding etc.

At the same time I started habit stacking to stop the feed to sleep association. I would feed him to sleep whilst patting his bottom and shushing, then I'd gradually unlatch him just as his eyes were going, then slightly earlier so he would feed and I'd finish him off by shush patting. I was then eventually able to put him in the cot awake and shush pat him to sleep with him holding his comforter.
The last stage was to then leave him on his own. I did controlled crying in 2-3 min bursts. I think the first time I did it was first nap of the day. He actually went down without much trouble the first time, I was really surprised. I think I only went in and out twice. I fed him to calm him down then put him back with the comforter. (Feeding to comfort them was only reccommended up to 6mo in the little ones guide I used).
Over the next couple of days there were varying degrees of crying when I put him down but I don't remember it lasting half an hr or anything. Was no more than going in and out a few times.
He still woke up in the night for feeds which I still continued with but they were definitely less than before. If his dad put him to bed sometimes he would sleep till 3am!
Naps were far longer, I was actually able to get stuff done and wasn't sitting there for half an hr trying to get him to sleep 🥳
Good luck xx

Totally agree that it sounds pretty normal. I'd try moving bedtime to 8pm. Move it by 10 minutes every 3 days or so until you're at 8pm. You'll get to stay up a little later and hopefully the restless spell will start a little later in the morning.

I'd also be tempted to offer a feed on waking instead of the bottle, hopefully they will drift off for an hour or two afterwards. Abs do they need a nappy change at night? If they're not pooing or leaking I'd skip that bit.

As for the naps, mine always slept better if they'd had good naps. Have you read the No Cry Nap Solution?

31 ways to get your baby to sleep and stay asleep might help but what you're experiencing is definitely normal for their age

*Feed instead of the dummy.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I have thought about offering a feed at 4.30/5. However 2 things which have stopped me are:

1. they are combi fed, in their night feed they will take both boobs and then around 4.5oz of their 5oz formula bottle. This seems a huge amount to me so I genuinely don't think they are waking 2.5h later from hunger.
2. if I did offer a feed it would have to be boob because I'm not making up bottles at 4.30am. However because of combi feeding I only breastfeed on average every 5/6h so am worried I don't have supply to feed them only 2.5-3h after the 1.30am breastfeed.

I have also thought about moving bedtime- however they are absolutely ready to go to bed by 7. Some days they will have had a nap 5.15 to 5.45 because that's how their naps fell and they will still be falling asleep by 6.45pm. Naturally they have fallen into a 6.45/7pm bedtime. Which works well really as that's when our eldest goes to sleep.

Nappy change in night is definitely a necessity because they leak otherwise.

I hope I'm not coming across as vetoing everyone's suggestions as I am open to them!

I am going to try habit stacking and shush pat as suggested by one pp.

Can anyone remind me when they're old enough to replace their own dummy???

Thanks for those links @priti I haven't seen either of them before so will have a read today!

Your boobs will definitely have enough milk for a feed so don't worry about that. Even if it's not much for the first try, your body will respond after a couple of days and realise that this is when you need to feed.