Lots of issues - please help: short naps, feed-to-sleep etc

[Dsushee]

Hi Ladies
I'm hoping you'll be able to shed some light for me on how to improve things here.
let me start by saying that I was following the EASY principles up until the 4 month sleep regression and that's when my LO went on a feeding strike during the day and only wanted to eat at night. He was getting up every 30-90 minutes for 8 weeks and at the end of it I was exhausted.
So i started to feed him to sleep to make sure he was feeding during the day. This worked and he's now waking 1-3 times a night only which is wonderful. (not perfect but much better, but that's another story).

During the day he wakes up between 6 and 7 and normally as he's only had a feed at his 5am wake up I don't offer it to him. I have stopped offering it to him unless its before sleeping because it would make him cry and cry and it wasn't doing either of us any good.
Then we have a pattern of only being awake between 60-90 minutes and then sleeping for 35-45 (occasionally an hour). So all in all during the day we could do between 4-5 naps.
This may seem like a lot (it feels a lot) but when I try to stretch out A time he gets sooo over tired that he only sleeps for 20 minutes. This is even if I stretch it for a little more like 10 minutes.  I watch for his cues and he rarely fights to go to sleep for his naps. He's normally ready by 70-80 minutes from wake up.

9 times out of 10 when he wakes up he seems happy, rested and ready to go! on the rare occasion that he doesn't seem rested then I try to get him back to sleep (boob, no boob, rocking, shush/pat) and it doesn't work. Does the fact he wakes up happy and rested mean that he actually doesn't need more sleep?
perhaps he'll just stay awake longer on his own?

in any case I  would prefer to feed him when awake but i have to admit that I like the comfort of knowing that he'll just keep sucking until he's asleep and therefore will keep getting what he needs. His weight started to drop during his day time feed refusal phase and so I have that anxiety to deal with too.

any help you can give would be greatly received.
many thanks
D

[Aishi]

Hi

How old is lo? Av a time at 4mo is 1h45-2h so at 70-80 mins he def needs an a increase since he's older than that!

Is my baby ready to increase his ‘A’ time? (incl. 'A' times for younger babies)

Can you post your easy as best as possible in EAS format. 30-35 min naps are usually OT....but if he's waking happy and giving 20 min naps as OT naps (u sure theyre not discomfort naps if you're fts? Eg gas wind?)...he may have a 30 min cycle so you're 30-35 min naps may well be UT and so require an a time increase. You can do this gradually in 5min increments. Unfortunately OT is inevitable during a increases and you just have to ride it out. But post ur EAS and we can take it from there.

Also if you would like to brake the fts prop then props board will be able to help with that...hh