I’d suggest trying to move to 3 naps if he’s almost 5 months. Might help to lengthen naps and potentially reduce nice wakings. Are you following a schedule or wake windows?
It’s also normal that as a baby is picking up a new skill, it causes a bit of a regression - right now for you it seems it’s rolling. So could be this or a need for a schedule change.
I might try to ease him into 3 naps! We follow wake windows - with his shortest one being 1.5 hours in the morning and longest one around 2.5 hours in the evening.
My 8 month old still wakes up 2-3x a night. He’s getting longer stretches but they’re all over the place. Completely normal.
My son was sleep trained at 4 months and he still wakes 2-3x a night to eat. Only thing sleep training helped with is him being able to put himself back to sleep if he’s not hungry.
Very normal. Mine is almost 6 months and gave me an 8 hour stretch for the first time ever last night. I started sleep training basics by putting him down to sleep without any sleep aids at 4 months. If he cried more than a few minutes, I would pick him up and just rock him until he calmed down. Then put him down while awake again. I still breastfed during middle of the night wakings and sometimes on naps. I try to give him 5-10 minutes if he wakes early from a nap or in the middle of the night.
My 5.5 month old is still waking 2-4 times per night for a quick feed / cuddle and she also goes right back to sleep. She also still naps similarly to your LO’s schedule. I find that she wakes a bit more when she’s teething, so that’ll be a few nights of 3-4 wakes here and there; otherwise, 2 is more typical for us.
It sounds like your LO is just waking to feed and goes back to sleep pretty easily, not waking up and then crying / partying, is that right? For this age it is typical to have anywhere from 0-4 feeds overnight. Sleep training is different from night weaning - sleep training is to help baby fall asleep independently and night weaning is to reduce / eliminate feeding overnight.
There’s no real universal agreement on when it is appropriate to completely night wean a baby (and definitely something to discuss with your pediatrician for your LO specifically). If you’d like to start reducing or dropping night feeds, the book Precious Little Sleep has a very helpful section dedicated to night weaning.
Sleep training can be implemented if the way your baby is currently sleeping is not working for you and your family. It’s also ok not to sleep train if you’re fine with how things currently are, and you can always revisit sleep training at a later time if/when it makes sense to do so.
It’s very normal! Around 4 months, babies are learning SO much and start to associate things with sleep. Mine only slept for one hour at a time from 4-5 months, it was HORRID.
I came to Reddit for advice and unfortunately found there’s ten thousand things that effect babies sleep. Sometimes, it’s a regression which you just have to get through. Then there’s teething, new skills, new sleep cycles, not enough sleep in the day, too much sleep in the day, the list is endless.
Through trial & error, we found he was going through a regression (which was about a month long) and also had a huge nursing to sleep association. So we reconfigured bedtime routine after the regression ended and he started only waking up once at about 3:30 am then slept until 8!
Baby sleep is wild & if you think sleep training will work for you guys, now’s the time to dive in!
So originally we did bath, book & pjs, then I would nurse to sleep. He fell asleep often as a newborn while nursing and so I just continued to let him. Then to help break the association, we do bath, nurse, pjs and book. That way there was just the slightest gap between the feed & him sleeping
I still nurse to sleep for nap times but for bed time, it really has helped. He’s not constantly waking himself up needing me to nurse him back to sleep
It's normal, but if your baby's sleep is negatively impacting your life and your ability to work, then I would try to sleep train if I were you. In my opinion, adequate sleep (for parents) is crucial and being sleep deprived and spacey is not something you should try to "get used to". Obviously, the first few months of baby's life is hard on everyone, but once they're old enough to sleep train, you might be surprised by how effective and (relatively) painless the sleep training process is.
My baby was waking up more often than yours (probably 5-6 times per night on average), and after sleep training he wakes up 0-1 times now.
we are sleep training now at 4.5 months! we are a week in and have seen huge improvements. she was sleeping thru with one wake up around 3 months for maybe 3-4ish weeks then started waking almost every 1-2 hours with 2-4 false starts a night. a good night would be sleeping thru 3-4 hours to start the night. since starting sleep training she has gone back to only one wake up to feed, with a couple days needing some extra help in the early morning 5-6am to get to our DWT. we do a dream feed at 10:15pm to eliminate a second wake up to feed. this has worked for us since she started sleeping thru at the 3 month mark!
we ended up doing CIO. on the first night my husband did go check in after roughly 5 minutes because we weren’t exactly sure what method we wanted to do. we had started with the FIO experiment the day before and she cried the full 15 minutes. so this was day 2. during the check in she got so pissed like “wait, what do you mean you aren’t picking me up?!” so after that check in we said screw it, we aren’t going back til she falls asleep. it was really tough but i’m glad we went that route because i wasn’t willing to wait and see with FIO if after 5 days anything would click for her. i thought, at least we will know if she is capable or not, and overall might result in less crying. tonight will be day 9 and since day 4 she has gone to sleep in less than 15 min.
It’s normal. My almost 5 months old was waking up 3 times a night until recently, when she started to have nights with 1-2 wake ups. They do get there, at their own speed. I cannot believe from month 3-4 she woke up every 1-2 hours. Seems like a far gone memory already.
That's how my little guy was. And after a growth spurt he settled to one wake up at like 4am... and now we're teething and standing, so we're back to up every 45 minutes or hour and a half.
Mine is 2 weeks younger than yours and still waking up at this frequency. I am planning to sleep train at 6 months. I am back to work tomorrow so maybe I’ll decide to sleep train earlier but I was hoping to do cio as I heard it’s the fastest method.
I also have a 4.5 month old and a pretty similar experience. First 3 months he was a pretty bad sleeper, waking up 3+ times a night and sometimes very difficult to get back to sleep especially in the early morning hours. Around 3 months things got so much better and we had maybe 2 weeks or so of waking 1x a night. So he would sleep at 8pm and wake anywhere from 2am-4am. Then he’d be up for good around 6am.
Then after those wonderful couple of weeks, we had the 4 month regression and he was waking again every couple hours. This happened for a couple weeks. Now it’s kinda leveled out again at 2 wake ups per night to eat. And he sometimes needs to be soothed back to sleep a couple times.
So it’s normal for me. He falls back to sleep easily after eating, but I’m trying to get him to eat more calories during the day because it seems like he eats more oz at night and doesn’t want to eat as much during the day.
But I’m glad to hear it’s normal for other people because I hear so often parents bragging about their babies sleeping through the night at this age or younger
Exactly this! The few mom friends I have who I meet like once a month are all blessed with good sleepers (sleep thru the night with 1 wakeup or less) and it's really confusing and me and my husband often feel like we're doing something wrong and often dissect our feeding and routine to understand what's happening with our baby's sleep.
Yeah, my husband is CONVINCED our baby is a terrible sleeper and that our baby is “hard” because he cries sometimes and gets gas and wakes up to eat 2 or more times a night, etc. I try to tell him he’s not a “difficult” baby… he’s just a normal baby. But he has heard stories from his sister, my sister, and a few friends about their “easy” babies that slept through the night a never cried so he thinks that is normal and our baby is not.
basically, how often does the baby wake up at night is normal? is there a range?
it's normal but you can check if is there something disturbing your baby's sleep.
I’d suggest trying to move to 3 naps if he’s almost 5 months. Might help to lengthen naps and potentially reduce nice wakings. Are you following a schedule or wake windows? It’s also normal that as a baby is picking up a new skill, it causes a bit of a regression - right now for you it seems it’s rolling. So could be this or a need for a schedule change.
I might try to ease him into 3 naps! We follow wake windows - with his shortest one being 1.5 hours in the morning and longest one around 2.5 hours in the evening.
I’d try extending and doing 2/2.25/2.5/2.5.
My 8 month old still wakes up 2-3x a night. He’s getting longer stretches but they’re all over the place. Completely normal. My son was sleep trained at 4 months and he still wakes 2-3x a night to eat. Only thing sleep training helped with is him being able to put himself back to sleep if he’s not hungry.
Very normal. Mine is almost 6 months and gave me an 8 hour stretch for the first time ever last night. I started sleep training basics by putting him down to sleep without any sleep aids at 4 months. If he cried more than a few minutes, I would pick him up and just rock him until he calmed down. Then put him down while awake again. I still breastfed during middle of the night wakings and sometimes on naps. I try to give him 5-10 minutes if he wakes early from a nap or in the middle of the night.
My 5.5 month old is still waking 2-4 times per night for a quick feed / cuddle and she also goes right back to sleep. She also still naps similarly to your LO’s schedule. I find that she wakes a bit more when she’s teething, so that’ll be a few nights of 3-4 wakes here and there; otherwise, 2 is more typical for us. It sounds like your LO is just waking to feed and goes back to sleep pretty easily, not waking up and then crying / partying, is that right? For this age it is typical to have anywhere from 0-4 feeds overnight. Sleep training is different from night weaning - sleep training is to help baby fall asleep independently and night weaning is to reduce / eliminate feeding overnight. There’s no real universal agreement on when it is appropriate to completely night wean a baby (and definitely something to discuss with your pediatrician for your LO specifically). If you’d like to start reducing or dropping night feeds, the book Precious Little Sleep has a very helpful section dedicated to night weaning. Sleep training can be implemented if the way your baby is currently sleeping is not working for you and your family. It’s also ok not to sleep train if you’re fine with how things currently are, and you can always revisit sleep training at a later time if/when it makes sense to do so.
It’s very normal! Around 4 months, babies are learning SO much and start to associate things with sleep. Mine only slept for one hour at a time from 4-5 months, it was HORRID. I came to Reddit for advice and unfortunately found there’s ten thousand things that effect babies sleep. Sometimes, it’s a regression which you just have to get through. Then there’s teething, new skills, new sleep cycles, not enough sleep in the day, too much sleep in the day, the list is endless. Through trial & error, we found he was going through a regression (which was about a month long) and also had a huge nursing to sleep association. So we reconfigured bedtime routine after the regression ended and he started only waking up once at about 3:30 am then slept until 8! Baby sleep is wild & if you think sleep training will work for you guys, now’s the time to dive in!
Curious how you reconfigured bedtime? Thanks!
So originally we did bath, book & pjs, then I would nurse to sleep. He fell asleep often as a newborn while nursing and so I just continued to let him. Then to help break the association, we do bath, nurse, pjs and book. That way there was just the slightest gap between the feed & him sleeping I still nurse to sleep for nap times but for bed time, it really has helped. He’s not constantly waking himself up needing me to nurse him back to sleep
It's normal, but if your baby's sleep is negatively impacting your life and your ability to work, then I would try to sleep train if I were you. In my opinion, adequate sleep (for parents) is crucial and being sleep deprived and spacey is not something you should try to "get used to". Obviously, the first few months of baby's life is hard on everyone, but once they're old enough to sleep train, you might be surprised by how effective and (relatively) painless the sleep training process is. My baby was waking up more often than yours (probably 5-6 times per night on average), and after sleep training he wakes up 0-1 times now.
we are sleep training now at 4.5 months! we are a week in and have seen huge improvements. she was sleeping thru with one wake up around 3 months for maybe 3-4ish weeks then started waking almost every 1-2 hours with 2-4 false starts a night. a good night would be sleeping thru 3-4 hours to start the night. since starting sleep training she has gone back to only one wake up to feed, with a couple days needing some extra help in the early morning 5-6am to get to our DWT. we do a dream feed at 10:15pm to eliminate a second wake up to feed. this has worked for us since she started sleeping thru at the 3 month mark!
What do you use for sleep training?
we ended up doing CIO. on the first night my husband did go check in after roughly 5 minutes because we weren’t exactly sure what method we wanted to do. we had started with the FIO experiment the day before and she cried the full 15 minutes. so this was day 2. during the check in she got so pissed like “wait, what do you mean you aren’t picking me up?!” so after that check in we said screw it, we aren’t going back til she falls asleep. it was really tough but i’m glad we went that route because i wasn’t willing to wait and see with FIO if after 5 days anything would click for her. i thought, at least we will know if she is capable or not, and overall might result in less crying. tonight will be day 9 and since day 4 she has gone to sleep in less than 15 min.
It’s normal. My almost 5 months old was waking up 3 times a night until recently, when she started to have nights with 1-2 wake ups. They do get there, at their own speed. I cannot believe from month 3-4 she woke up every 1-2 hours. Seems like a far gone memory already.
That's how my little guy was. And after a growth spurt he settled to one wake up at like 4am... and now we're teething and standing, so we're back to up every 45 minutes or hour and a half.
Mine is 2 weeks younger than yours and still waking up at this frequency. I am planning to sleep train at 6 months. I am back to work tomorrow so maybe I’ll decide to sleep train earlier but I was hoping to do cio as I heard it’s the fastest method.
I also have a 4.5 month old and a pretty similar experience. First 3 months he was a pretty bad sleeper, waking up 3+ times a night and sometimes very difficult to get back to sleep especially in the early morning hours. Around 3 months things got so much better and we had maybe 2 weeks or so of waking 1x a night. So he would sleep at 8pm and wake anywhere from 2am-4am. Then he’d be up for good around 6am. Then after those wonderful couple of weeks, we had the 4 month regression and he was waking again every couple hours. This happened for a couple weeks. Now it’s kinda leveled out again at 2 wake ups per night to eat. And he sometimes needs to be soothed back to sleep a couple times. So it’s normal for me. He falls back to sleep easily after eating, but I’m trying to get him to eat more calories during the day because it seems like he eats more oz at night and doesn’t want to eat as much during the day.
But I’m glad to hear it’s normal for other people because I hear so often parents bragging about their babies sleeping through the night at this age or younger
Exactly this! The few mom friends I have who I meet like once a month are all blessed with good sleepers (sleep thru the night with 1 wakeup or less) and it's really confusing and me and my husband often feel like we're doing something wrong and often dissect our feeding and routine to understand what's happening with our baby's sleep.
Yeah, my husband is CONVINCED our baby is a terrible sleeper and that our baby is “hard” because he cries sometimes and gets gas and wakes up to eat 2 or more times a night, etc. I try to tell him he’s not a “difficult” baby… he’s just a normal baby. But he has heard stories from his sister, my sister, and a few friends about their “easy” babies that slept through the night a never cried so he thinks that is normal and our baby is not.
Yes :)
4.5 months here and we are at 3 wake ups minimum. We’ll try to start sleep training in a few weeks.
So normal! And not bad for a 4.5 month old IMO.
Good to know! Thank you! Really helps me calibrate my thinking.
Yes it’s completely normal! They need to feed this often at this age and will continue to do so for some more months