4 1/2 month old starting to wake at 4 am.

[Wendy2201]

Hello.
My LO is 20 weeks and has recently started waking up at 4 am. I'm fairly new to EASY and has really helped with dealing with nap time and routines.  He used to wake at different times around 4-6am for feeds, but he has been consistently 4am for a while now. I have tried putting dummy in and shush/pat to sleep as looked more sleepy than tired. Does sometimes have another 45 mins then wakes again, or like this morning 10 mins. In the end,  I fed him and he did sleep until his usual WU time if 7.
We have a nice bedtime routine and after his feed he goes to sleep without dummy on his own at 19.00/19.15. I'm having to shush/pay him during his naps to get any longer than 45 mins and hoping that he will get better at getting himself back to sleep soon. his A times during the day are 1hr50 to 2 hrs.

I'm not sure if this is normal for his age to be waking during the night as did have a period where he was sleeping thru. Created some bad habits before discovering BW so don't want to create anymore!

Any thoughts/ advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks, Wendy

[becj86]

Its quite normal for a baby of 4.5 months to be wakings once or twice for a night feed. Waking soon after resettling like that almost always means hunger and frankly, I'd feed him and go back to bed.

Your A times sound alright - may need to increase them a little towards 2.5hr though.The short naps are quite possibly still developmental at this stage but the increase in A times if done gently and consistently may just reap you some rewards in terms of longer independent naps - how long does he take to resettle when he stirs at 45min?

[Wendy2201]

Ok. Thanks for that reassurance. I'll feed him as usual and not worry to much about trying to resettle back straight away.
 
I've always been a bit cautious with his A times as he gets OT very quickly and then struggle to wind him down. 70% of time he settles back after a jolt etc and sometimes wakes after 45 mins but seems ok with the length of nap. Depending on how he stirs I either just put my hand on his arm and pat gently if needed, or I hold his legs to prevent the jolt waking him. Doesn't always work! Without any intervention he always wakes up at 30/45 mins. Im really hoping that this improves soon as hard to find time to do anything! Perhaps I'll try extending A at 10 min intervals?

Thanks for your advice, Wendy

[becj86]

I've always been a bit cautious with his A times as he gets OT very quickly and then struggle to wind him down.

Yes, this puts a lot of people off extending A times because LO's sleep windows are so small when they are really young. The thing is though, that if LO is UT and only getting short naps all day, they can end up OT anyway from the lack of restorative sleep. Being scared of OT and not pushing the A times can result in OT, which is a bit counter-intuitive I guess, but there you go.