Waking up 4-5 times at night 🙈

So my son who is 4 months and a week old (was born three weeks earlier than his due date) has never slept well at night. Currently he wakes up five times at night. I breastfeed him and give him a bottle of breast milk when doing his bedtime routine but he only drinks about 2.5 -3oz. We’re trying to figure out whether he has some sort of allergy (I cut out dairy for over a month but his stool samples still show blood in them which indicates that he still has something that’s causing him inflammation). He’s growing really well so the doctors don’t seem very concerned and are telling me that I just need to sleep train my son, but I really want to figure out if there’s something else that I can do to help the situation.

My son needs to be rocked to sleep. I’ve tried the putting him down drowsy but awake and it always backfires since it either takes multiple attempts to get him to sleep in the bassinet or he’ll wake up an hour later. He almost always wakes up an hour later once I put him down to sleep for the night. We usually start our day around 8:30 am. And he wakes up from his last nap around 7/7:30 pm and goes to sleep around 9 pm usually. During the day when I’m able to put him in the bassinet he’ll nap for about 30 mins to maybe 45ish minutes. I try to save the nap by rocking him back to sleep and just holding him at that time.

I’m wondering if I need to change his bedtime and wake time and if there’s something else I can do to help improve his sleep. It’s really taking a toll on me and I’m getting really nervous about starting back work in April :/. Would love any advice for people who may have gone through something similar!

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We have similar issues. (We didn’t always but we’re going through the 4 month regression). Last night we tried two new things: feeding her before we do the bedtime routine and following the soothing ladder (we didn’t need to go further than the 2nd step). I think it helped with putting her down to bed

I will say I was putting my baby to sleep between 8-9 or 9-10 and she was doing ok but recently she started getting tired earlier. I now start my bedtime routine at 6. She falls asleep around 7. Then I wake her up for a feeding 10-11 and put her right back. She will sleep until anywhere from 4:30-6:00 am. I found she was overtired before.
Now we’ve hit 4 month sleep regression due to not being able to swaddle and I think I need to transition to her crib she just moves too much and is out of space in the bassinet.

what is the soothing ladder? My son never slept well so even if he is going through the four month regression I have no idea if it’s that or just something he’s always been doing and is used to by now. I generally will feed him when he does wake up to get him back to sleep quicker and to allow me to sleep quicker too

Ive also found that it helps when I feed her a lot during the day

So it sounds like sleep regression and I also think that you may need to get him up earlier and down earlier. But either way my son did this at 3.5 month old. He use to sleep easy but then naps got shorter and then he woke up during the night he is now 4.5 months old and it finally was ending. I had to rock/ bounce him to sleep multiple wakings. Some times he could get himself back to sleep if I let him fuss a bit for a while. But now we are sleep training. After now 4 days he can get himself to sleep and now does a 2 hour nap a 1.5 hour nap then about 45 min nap. The longest he cried for was during a nap for about 20 mins. 4 months old I’m my opinion is the best time to sleep train. This is when they start their memory and it is the reason why they wake and want to be put to sleep the same way they went to sleep initially.

I would explore putting baby to bed earlier and starting day early. See if that helps at all . 8:30 pm can be a bit late but depends on baby for sure

curious how you trained your naps ? My baby won’t sleep longer in his crib than 35-45 mins max . I always have to rescue the nap with a contact he nap.

Maybe try a dream feed around 10-11?

My LO wasn’t sleeping enough. We tried everything we could think of. Finally we moved him to our bed with us and he has been sleeping so much better. We went from an average of 9.5 hours/day to 12. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it has been worth it for us!

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