My 4 month old has always been able to put himself to sleep, but has always struggled to go beyond 45mins. Occassionally he will wake and have a cry and go back to sleep and occassionally he will sleep for 2 hours, but most of the time I'm trying to resettle. I find that he only can be up for a little over an hour before he shows signs of being tired. I have tried to cut back his stimuliation to help keep him up longer, but at this point it hasn't made much difference.
I have only just purchased the Baby Whisperer books and previously I was using another method which has the same routine, but does not help with nap issues and when things don't go by the plan, which is what I'm finding.
When he was about 3 months old he started to sleep well throught the nights, anywhere between 7 to 9 hours and occassionaly right through 7pm to 7am. That lasted for 3 weeks, then he started waking throughout the night. I also tried introducing a dreamfeed, but I found that he just continued to wake during the night, so never did a long stretch of sleep.
Any advise would be appreciated.