My 16 week old is combination fed, he’s never been a great sleeper but things seem to be getting slightly worse since the 4m sleep regression hit. He will sometimes do a longer stretch at the start of the night, 4.5hrs last night! Which is unheard of. Most of the time it’s around 2.5hrs as the longest stretch, then he wakes every 1hr 15m after that. Which means he’s waking around 7-9 times a night.
I have always just breast feed him at each wake up to get him back to sleep faster, but in the last week we’ve stopped ‘feeding to sleep’ so I have tried to soothe him during the night wake ups with rocking and a dummy. This doesn’t work though and he’ll cry for the boob. So I tend to resort back to breastfeeding.
From a very early age we created the sleep associations and bedtime routine (white noise, dimly lit room, swaddle/sleeping bag) so that is all embedded and we do the same thing every night before bed.
My plan is to gently sleep train him after Christmas when he’s 5 months old with the PUPD method.
I know there is lots of information about making sure day time sleep is correct - we are in a lovely day time routine now of 3 or 4 naps depending on what we’re doing in the day. And he will get between 2-4 hours of day time sleep.
My understanding is that he hasn’t learnt how to connect sleep cycles. Although I know he can do it as he sometimes does those longer stretches at the start of the night.
Has anyone been in this situation and their baby learnt how to link the sleep cycles on their own? Is sleep training necessary for a baby to sleep longer and only wake when they’re hungry / uncomfortable? Is breast feeding the reason? Lots of my friends with formula fed babies tend to be much better sleepers!
Thank You! From a very tired mamma