5 month old no longer sleeps well

[BFadvice]

My 5 month old baby no longer sleeps very well at night. At around 10 weeks he was going 10-11 hours but now is awake for hours a night and up 3/4 times, this has been happening for almost 2 months. I obviously know about the sleep regression but everywhere I look it says this typically lasts 2-6 weeks. In the daytime he sometimes has a long sleep for 2/3 hours at lunchtime. Should I be stopping this and waking him up after an hour? He clearly needs the sleep but would rather him be getting that at night!

I'm afraid to say that my DD's best sleep in the first year was around 3-4 months. She slept 10 hours most nights between 12 and 18 weeks. Things went downhill then with the 4 month sleep regression with hourly wake ups for a few weeks but then slowly got better, with her consistently sleeping through by 12 months. What helped for us was slowly working on her self soothing skills. I used sush patting at first and a bit of pick up put down when she was older. Practiced at nap times first, then gradually at bedtime. It's hard because you expect babies' sleep to improve linearly but actually I found it's actually very inconsistent and up and down. Sometimes she would go to sleep easily and sleep great for days but then need more help for a few days, etc. The frequency of good sleep definitely increases though as time goes on. They all get there in the end! Hang in there :-)

If things have not improved by 6 months and you're struggling you could try some more formal sleep training too depending on your views on the subject! I didn't do it because my DD was showing signs of self soothing and was easier to work with her at her own pace.

Regarding the nap, I wouldn't wake after an hour. You could try limiting it to two hours though. Does he have a couple of other naps in the day too?

@amy1313 thanks so much for your reply, sounds like they're similar and lured us into a false sense of security early on! I knew it was too good to be true lol. I think I do need to work on some self soothing, at the moment he will only feed to sleep (exclusively BF at the moment) for night time sleep and naps and will only contact nap on me if we're in the house but will sleep in pram/car seat when we're out and about. I am trying to be positive because I know it won't last forever and I do enjoy the contact naps (binge watching tv) but being startled awake for months on end has definitely been the tougher side of parenting for me!