I'm new to this forum, and to the babywhisperer so please bear with me! My DS is 5.5 months and has never been a great sleeper but since just before he turned 4 months his nighttime and daytime sleep has been awful. At first I put it down to the 4 month sleep regression, but it also coincided with him dropping his night feeds and us stopping using the swaddle (he started breaking out of it so it had to go). He started waking up a lot more during the night, anything from 3 to 8 times and most of the time needed help to get back to sleep (pacifier in, hold arms & shh) - though some times he managed to get back to sleep himself, and this has been more common recently so hopefully things are moving in the right direction.... He can also take anything from 15 mins up to (or even occasionally over) an hour to get back to sleep even with my help. Sometimes he'll try to get back to sleep himself but can try for up to an hour before he starts to moan. He usually manages a longer stretch at the beginning of the night (apart from one waking which usually happens 45 mins after going to sleep at bedtime - sometimes less) before the problem waking commences! The last few days or so he's had a good 7 or 8 hour stretch (settling himself back to sleep within that time).
Naps used to be usually 30 mins, but up to 2.5 hours (A time was anything up to 2 hours). Now we're lucky if he manages 30 mins. He more often has between 10 & 20 mins at each nap now. For the last 5 or 6 weeks I've been trying to keep A time to 1.5 hours, as he shows sleepy cues by 1 hour, and it takes around 30 mins to settle him. If A time is longer than this, it's usually harder to settle him, and his naps end up shorter... because of this, he's having up to 5 naps a day!! I try for 5, but quite often by the end of the day it gets harder to get him to sleep, by which I mean he'll get very sleepy in my arms but when I put him in his crib he's much more likely to wake fully. The past few weeks he's been having around 1-1.5 hours worth of naps. 2 on a very "good" day. I've found that I need to hold his arms during naps now as he starts to lift them and wakens up otherwise.
Pre-nap routine is: close curtains, in sleeping bag, white noise on, cuddles with pacifier in & lovey (only recently introduced this), then when very sleepy I put him in his crib. Bedtime routine is very similar, with the addition of a bottle, then a story before cuddles/pacifier/lovey. He can go down more awake at night time, with a pacifier and holding his arms/shushing until he closes his eyes. Note that he doesn't fall asleep with the pacifier in his mouth - he normally spits it out, or I remove it. I do feel he is becoming more dependent on it however to help him get sleepy.
He was a colicky baby until around the 4 month mark, and has reflux which is treated with Gavison Infant - and this makes him constipated so we give him lactulose to help with that.
We don't really have a routine as such, but I'm trying to space his feeds out every 3.5 hours, depending on his naps and what we have on for the day - he can easily go longer between feeds if needs be, and quite often doesn't want fed as early as that. He doesn't like to feed as soon as he wakes, and is a slow feeder so his last feed starts around an hour before he goes to sleep at night.
As an example, here is what happened yesterday:
Wake - 05:00am ( this last bit of sleep was only 15 minutes, prior to that was awake from 03:00am)
Eat - 06:15am
Sleep - 07:35am - 07:55am
Eat - 09:00am
Sleep - 09:40am - 09:50am
Sleep - 12:00pm - 12:15pm
Eat - 12:45pm
Sleep - 01:35pm - 01:50
(Tried to get him down for another nap, but he woke up fully when I put him in his crib and could get him back to sleep)
Eat - 04:45pm
Sleep - 06:05pm
Total nap sleep = 1 hour. Total night time sleep = 8 hrs 45 min.
If anyone has any insight into where I'm going wrong, I'd really appreciate your help. I feel like I do nothing but try to get him to sleep & stay asleep! I believe he is overtired and had thought shortening A time would help but it doesn't seem to be solving the problem at all. Maybe I should try him on an age-appropriate routine, but I'm concerned that it's harder to settle him with longer A time and his naps just get shorter. I hope I've given enough information... TIA