Help! (more sleep troubles)

Ok so DS (4 months) is having a very hard time these days staying asleep. Basically I put him down and he falls asleep pretty quickly on his own. 45 minutes later he's up. Every. Single. Time. All naps and bedtime. During naps I can sometimes get him to go back to sleep, sometimes not. In the evenings he does this on and off til 9pm or so at which point he becomes inconsolable so I bf him and he falls asleep while eating. I put him in his bed and he's out for several hours. I've played around with bedtime (anywhere from 5:30pm -7pm) and length of time between naps and nothing seems to change. What's frustrating is that this was not happening up until about a week and a half ago. I used to put him to bed and know that I could generally count on at least 8 hours before he'd wake to eat and then go right back. DD sleep right through it all fortunately. Thoughts? I want my evenings back!

 

The 45 minute timeframe sounds like he may be waking up when shifting from one sleep cycle to another. Some babies have a really hard time sleeping through the transition from one sleep cycle to the next, especially as they become more active and might startle themselves with a sudden movement in this half-awake state. Do you swaddle him? Might he be starting to teeth?

I would try going in a few minutes before he typically wakes up to soothe him into the next sleep cycle without having him wake up completely, for example by gently patting or rubbing his back, stroking him (for one of my babies the spot between the eyes was a sleep inducer), turning on the white noise machine again if you use one, shushing him quietly. Tis is much easier than soothing a baby which is fully awake.

I would also check if he sleeps better with a dream feed; one of my babies was often too tired to nurse properly at bedtime and needed another breastfeeding session before settling down to the longer stretch of sleep. BTW - neither of mine slept for anything close to 8 hours at that age, even my better sleeper typically managed no more than 5 hours, so it might be a while before you regain the 8 hour STTN.