5 month old sleep

[Dreckkly]

My 5 month old has turned into a terrible sleeper. They were regularly sleeping through the night from 4 weeks then the 4 month regression hit and it has just been getting worse and worse.

I EBF and the baby feeds to sleep. Nap times are ok, we do a mixture of feeding to sleep, or sling or pram and doing 1.5-2 hour wake windows goes down easily.

Night times are the issue, sleeping max 2 hours chunks and at worst 50 minutes. Last night we totally hit a wall and the baby probably got about 7 hours of overnight sleep as they were awake for two hours from 2-4am (a fairly regular occurrence). I'm aware it should be more like 11 hours.

The only way to settle overnight is by breastfeeding and I'm so done, I'm getting completely sick of feeding and being gnawed on.

Can anyone advise? We don't know whether to sleep train, wait it out, move to a cot, stop feeding to sleep or what but getting so desperate.

Could be reflux triggering those wake times.

So tough. We’re going through the regression with our second and it’s just as hard this time round! However I’m doing things differently and I feel it’s making a difference.
I’m following the taking Cara babies sit back method which is to encourage independent sleep during the regression so that when you’re out the other side they’re much better at sleep all round. It is NOT sleep training or cry it out, at all.
thete are two bits to it - one is slowly transitioning over several weeks the baby putting themselves to sleep in the cot. It’s really gentle baby steps to go from feeding to sleep to self soothing. We’re very slowly seeing an improvement after two weeks. At start of regression would not accept not being fed to sleep, now goes down drowsy in cot. This is helping sleep during the night and will help in the long term.

the other bit is how you handle wakings which again is a gradual transition- but I’ve gone from always feeding him to sleep to - on occasion- being able to jyst gentle rock him in the cot and him fall back asleep. The idea is eventually he’ll be able to start doing this himself - once or twice he has already done this. It basically views the regression as a development period that you can use so when you get to the other side they’re much better have really well embedded habits. Worth checking out - it’s £40 for the PDF that covers 3-4 month regression - best of luck x

Thanks, will definitely take a look at that. Hopefully not too late to implement at 5 months.

She has fallen asleep on their own a few times so I know she's able to, it's just making it part of the routine that's so tricky isn't it😅

Totally! I also tried my own spin on it which worked well one night -I tried to rock him to sleep in the cot for 10 mins - he was having none of it, so I took him out, fed him to sleep, held him for 10 mins and put him down before he fell deeply asleep. He properly woke up but was rocked to sleep in the cot in a few seconds. It’s all trial and error isn’t it! X

How much day sleep total? Sounds like too much so I’d try reducing it and a later bedtime. You don’t have to force independent sleep, we always support to sleep at bedtime and through the night and she started through when she was ready to. It’s very unusual for yours to have slept through so young.

Oh and please don’t limit feeds overnight - they need it at that age.