Our three month old, who has no trouble falling asleep or being asleep at the beginning of the night, wakes us at 4.30am most mornings, flailing his arms, raising and slamming his legs onto the mattress, whimpering, grunting, all sorts. This can go on for two hours until he finally wakes up.
His eyes are closed throughout. Most of the time he doesn't appear to be aware of what he's doing but this morning his whimpers were accompanied by strained breathing that seemed to be causing him actual discomfort. Like a bad dream that was causing physical breathing changes.
I've read this behaviour is normal for newborns and it's to do with their digestive system waking up for the day, but when will it end?! He's not really newborn anymore, he's huge and eating well, burping well, he has mainly breastmilk but 1-2 bottles of formula a day.
After I fed him this morning at 7am he went right back to sleep next to me downstairs so it does seem that he's not getting quality sleep from 4am onwards. (Otherwise he'd have been awake for a bit and ready to play.)
Any ideas how to improve this or is it just a case of waiting it out?