Our just-turned 3 month old EBF DS is a great kid. He's generally cheerful, engaged, and has been eating and growing like a champ!

Sleep, on the other hand...has been problematic. The longest he's ever slept at night so far has been 5 hours at the beginning of the night (which means I sleep 4 hours, after which he wakes every 1-2hours)...and that only started happening with any frequency around two weeks ago. The following week, though, it became hit-or-miss (say 50% of nights with the longer stretch)...and for the last 3 days, the longest stretch (for me) has been 2.5 hours.

So far, we're sleeping swaddled in (but progressively outgrowing) the RnP at night and the PnP (in our room) for naps. That said, I have a babe who (like most?) strongly prefers to nap in arms. In fact, when he fusses at night, sometimes he falls promptly back to sleep once picked up.

At night, he may nurse to sleep and is ALWAYS--so far-- laid down asleep. During the day, he can frequently just fall asleep in arms or can be shushed and lulled with "mommy swaying"...but he also frequently falls asleep during a meal.

I have tried putting him down tired but awake and also drowsy for naps...but I feel he's still too young for CIO, so while I'll allow fussing, I don't let him cry for very long at all before picking him up...upon which he frequently --and immediately!-- falls fast asleep and I can put him down to sleep for 30 minutes generally.

This is what happened this morning and now I have an (exhausted?) and napping baby on my chest. I should add that, even as I've been trying to get him to nap down over the last month or so, I've still been trying to facilitate at least 1-2 longer naps in arms each day, because clearly he's not chaining together his little short baby sleep cycles, "sleep begets sleep" (right?) and having an over-tired baby sucks...a lot.

The only correlations I've come up with so far are that he wakes more at night if he eats less frequently (we're still every 2hours or so) during the day...and he will fight sleep and be cranky if over-tired... So far, I've been content to chalk all of this up to normal development and "he'll sleep longer --unassisted-- when he's ready." But mama's tired AND going back to work in a week and a half...

Any thoughts or suggestions! I'm feeling a little resigned at this point...but not sure how I can function at work if this keeps up!

Thanks for reading this far...