I am looking for some advice from anyone who has been through similar, or atleast some assurance that it will all get better one day! Most people I know in real life apparently have these lovely sleeping unicorn babies who wake for their singular feed at night and then go back down and also nap beautifully for hours.
DS is 20 weeks, EBF (bottle refusing) and was very colicky from weeks 3 - 10-ish. If important, he was born by emergency c-section 15 days late, so I guess physically he is more like 22 weeks, but I was told before on here that doesn't matter for development purposes.
His sleep has always been a bit crap (cluster feeding, multiple wakes) and has not been helped by a run of 3 colds and vaccine side effects. Since mid-February his daytime naps all dramatically shortened to 30 minutes each (sometimes even less). So consequently he has about 5 x 30 minutes naps a day, totalling about 2.5 hours daytime sleep on a good day. Naps are either breastfed latched on, contact on my chest, pram or car naps. A recent attempt at a cot nap resulted in a 20 minute nap, so I really don't see the point (or have the energy) for those until he is consistently taking longer naps.
Bedtime routine is bath, feed and bed. Last nap finishes about 1.5 - 2 hours before being put down. Sometimes a book before bath, but often he isn't in the mood (gets tired/fussy). After bath, I feed him in the dark with white noise and make an attempt for him to feed for up to 20 minutes per boob. This developed as a result of the cluster feeding and "forced" him to take enough milk. I then put him down (7:30pm), resting my hand on his chest and he would settle. Sometimes giving the cot mattress a little jiggly bounce if he resists.
For the last 2 weeks he has had a false start every night, apart from 2. He wakes within 40 minutes to an hour of being put down. We go up resettle (without feeding) and he would go back down. He then wakes up approx 3 times a night (sometimes for a feed, sometimes not) and comes into our bed from 4am onwards once I have had enough. Then usually I need to put him onto my chest from 6am until 7am, when he wakes for the day.
The last 2 nights I haven't been able to settle him back into his cot. He goes off and lasts an hour, but then false starts. We resettle, but within 20 minutes or so, has woken up and is fussing. This has resulted in co-sleeping all night, which is pretty rubbish sleep for me, although it is better than nothing.
He got his first tooth about a week and a half ago and I am pretty sure another must be on the way, mainly because since the tooth emerged he has continued chewing hands, dribbling, fussing and random screaming sessions. We have been giving calpol at night and more recently anbesol oil. We are a little wary of giving ibuprofen every night as he is still young.
If you have made it this far, thanks for reading. Does all this crap sleep we have been experiencing since mid february sound like it is solely due to early teething? Or a mix of sleep regression and just general bad sleeper? Any advice to fix this? Reading it all back it is such a mess.
In terms of tactics we've recently tried a super extended 3 hour wake window before bed and it did remove the false start, but he was very unsettled for the rest of the night. Also tried reducing down to 4 naps a day, which has lengthened the last nap of the day to 50 minutes, but has resulted in a lot of overtired behaviour and seemingly had no effect on night sleep