FTM to a 5 month old baby boy, exclusively breastfeeding.
Up until about 3 weeks ago all naps were either contact nap on the sofa, car naps or carrier naps. The contact naps were fed to sleep but in hindsight I was unlatching before he was fully asleep and settling him drowsy on my chest as that was more comfortable for me than the feeding position.
At bedtime he was rocked to sleep which we got down to about 10 minutes and some nights I even managed to put him down drowsy and he’d do the last bit himself in his crib. Night sleep was good with usually 1 wake in the night for a feed.
About 3 weeks ago, one day I decided to feed him lying down on my bed and he fell asleep. I thought this was great as compared to my usual several hours nap trapped on the sofa I could at least move around, do some work on my laptop, tidy up around the bedroom etc whilst still obviously watching him. So I started to do every nap like this (unless we were out and about) and he would fall asleep within 5 minutes of me laying down to feed him.
Fast forward to now and the naps are the same but bedtime is becoming increasingly difficult. We’re now rocking for up to 2 hours for him to fall asleep and he’s started waking 3-4 times instead of his usual one. Initially I thought this was because he had a cold and maybe he was uncomfortable but tonight he started trying to latch onto any part of my face/body and suck as I was rocking him.
It’s made me think have I created too strong of a feed-to-sleep association that he now won’t fall asleep with me rocking him? Or is this just the 4 month sleep regression coming in a bit late (we never really went through it before). If it’s the former then how do I reverse it? He won’t contact nap on me now the same way he did before so I can’t go back to that, but I also don’t really want to formerly sleep train as in general he still has mostly good nights it’s just taking us forever to get him to sleep.
Thanks in advance for any advice!