Looking for advice on my 4.5 month old (will try to keep this brief!). My issue is early waking, he usually wakes for his second night feed at 4 ish (first feed usually 1ish) and I put him down from this at around 4.30 am but usually from 5.15 am he is awake and I have to reinsert dummy about 10 times and usually co sleep with my hand on his chest to settle him back to sleep. As a result I am knackered with the early wakings and little sleep in general. How do I get him to wake later?
I think the issue might be his naps, he does nap a lot during the day. I stick to 2 hours awake time then let him nap for as long as he wants (if relevant all his naps are contact naps as he wakes after about 15 mins if I put him in his cot). He usually has a morning nap of 2 hours , then 2
further naps of 1 hour each. Awake time before bed is usually short at around 1 hour, I try to keep
him awake longer but he gets so tired and crabby. He usually goes to bed 7.30-8.30 ish. Bedtime is a battle as he has never been keen on his formula and is sometimes a right battle just to get him to drink his bedtime bottle.
One more question also is how important is the bedtime bottle? As I focus so much on the timing of bedtime to make sure he is hungry enough for a bottle and tired enough to sleep that it usually ends up he's too tired and grumpy to take a bottle anyway and that escalated into 45 mins of screaming before bed as I'm trying to give him a bottle he doesn't want.
Any help appreciated as I am extremely anxious about this and seem to spend hours a day googling but not getting anywhere!xx