Hi ladies - I'm new here. I have a 4.5 month old son who has been fighting sleep since he was about 4 weeks old. It feels like it's been an uphill battle and there are days it seems like we take one step forward, but two steps back. I'm going to try and summarize what we've been doing as best as I can.
His natural WU seems to be between 8:30 AM and 9:15 AM. I've tried "waking him up" at 8:30 AM on days that he sleeps past that, but I don't know if that's the right thing to do or not. No matter what time he wakes up, he will NOT eat as soon as he wakes. I usually have to wait another 30 - 60 minutes before he's interested in eating. That makes moving him on an EASY schedule kind of challenging. He is EBF. His eating recently has been all over the place. At times he will go 3ish hours between feeds, but other times he seems hungrier sooner. He's been VERY distracted while nursing lately, so I've been trying to limit nursing sessions to a quiet and dark room but sometimes he'll still get distracted at the shadows on the ceiling or wall.
His A time between naps is around 1:45. He had been napping for only 35 - 45 minutes, but I think we are making progress on that front by extending his A time slightly by 15 min (previously his A time was 1:30). We have broken him of the swaddle in the past few days (was breaking free on his own and is close to rolling from back to tummy) and yesterday he took 2, 1.5 - 2 hour naps and a 3rd evening catnap of 35 minutes. Our nap routine usually consists of diaper change and arms out swaddle/sleep sack and lay him down in his crib. If he doesn't go to sleep right away, we will bounce him on an exercise ball until he is relaxed (but still awake) and then lay him back in his crib and either bounce the mattress or shush/pat him until he drifts off. If he does wake early, I have had some luck with repeating the bouncing and shush/pat to get him to extend his nap, although it doesn't always work. He has fallen asleep 100% on his own a handful of times without any extra effort on our part, but usually he still requires some assistance.
Night time has been awful lately. Based on his WU, I figure BT should be around 9 PM. It's usually not an issue of getting him to sleep at that time, it's that he will wake 35 - 60 min after it and FIGHT sleep for the next few hours (last night until 12 AM). He falls asleep, wakes up crying, we resettle, falls asleep, wake up crying, etc. Our BT routine is diaper/pajamas, story, feed, bed. 2 or 3 times a week we will do a bath/diaper/pajamas, but everything else remains the same. Our night time ritual is about the same to get him to sleep. We give him the opportunity to go to sleep on his own and when he starts crying we will bounce him until he's calm and then put him into the crib and bounce the mattress or shush/pat him. He also is unswaddled at night (recent) and at times does seem to try and find his hands to comfort himself. We do not give him a paci as he's never taken one. Once we get him asleep he's usually pretty good (for example, after he fell asleep at midnight last night he slept until 6:00 AM before needing a feed. I fed/changed him and he went back down until 9:15 AM).
I guess what I am looking to know is how to solve our night issues. How do I get him to STAY asleep after I put him down for bed? Is my routine OK? To get him on an EASY routine do I focus on BT or WU? Do I need to wake him up at a certain time every day if he doesn't naturally wake?
TIA!
