4 month old routine

My son was absolutely impossible, until I discovered Gina Ford, many don't like her for being too strict but you can adapt the schedule to suit your needs as well. Now all 3 kids are on Gina's routines.

I might be the wrong person to post here but I feel that I should tell you. I never had a proper routine until my son turned 9 months! It was just impossible. I tried the EASY and it did not work all the time. Every time when I thought he had a little schedule, he blew it off by waking up at different times. I also realized that trying to stick to routine that did not work was very stressful for me. I fed him when he woke up at night or basically anytime when he woke up. (breastfeeding) After six months I saw a slow improvement where I could predict his schedule.

I used to have a rule of thumb with my son that anything before 6 am was nighttime and anything after was daytime, so basically if he woke before 6 I'd feed him and try and get him back to sleep and if he was still awake or woke again after 6 we'd just start the day. My thoughts with your first nap is that it might help to bring it early, I suspect it will take you quite a long time to soothe him to sleep and this will be easier if he isn't so overtired. Once you have caught up on sleep you can experiment with pushing the nap later but a general rule of thumb is that the smallest stretch of wake time is usually between starting the day and the first nap, and the longest stretch is between the last nap and bedtime. If you manage to get a long nap then he will still wake from the first nap at around the same time as he already is, but much more refreshed. I've found with my babies, if they wake crying, they really weren't ready to wake up, if they wake smiling then the nap was long enough. As far as waiting until 10am for the bottle, my personal view is that I think sleep schedules ( when tailored to the baby) are great but I think babies should be fed when they are hungry even if formula fed, rather than by schedule. I also think reflux babies are much better off with split feeds so as not to overfill the tummy. But if your feeding schedule is working for you then stick with it. You might end up with more of a 6 til 6 routine for a while rather than 7 til 7, early wake ups are the hardest to fix although I would invest in a white noise machine if you haven't already ( or just download where noise tracks from iTunes) they are great sleep cues and also mask the morning noises that can wake kids up). Great news on the two hour nap! I think if you can get day sleep sorted, nights will get better. A bit further down the track you might want to either take the dummy or work on teaching him how to find and put it back in by himself, our biggest obstacle was waking for the dummy, but right now I suspect you need it while you are sorting the rest out. The other thing I'd like to mention is that it's easy to feel like you are failing when your baby doesn't sleep as solidly as another, but although there are certain " healthy sleep habits" which help tremendously, sleep is also very much developmental and babies vary tremendously in when they are ready to sit, crawl, eat, talk etc and likewise in when they are ready to sleep without your help. Both my babies have had to be soothed between sleep cycles at 4 months, both started taking 90 minute naps at around 6 months and my son then moved on eventually to one 4 hour nap, which he has maintained for the last 20 months and is only now dropping (sob). Reflux babies need eve more help as they often wake in some discomfort, the reflux will start to improve as your baby becomes more mobile and strengthen their core. Lots of tummy time can help expedite this.

And remember, whenever you try something new, give it a few days to a week, keeping a record if sleep timings as you go, before deciding if it is working.

I would try and ease him out of having the naps in his chair, as newborns they tend to fall asleep anywhere anyhow but as they get older its more about developing sleep associations s and getting better quality sleep. The baby whisperer books, which I assume you have as you talk about the EASY routine are quite good at explaining this. He will get too big for the chair and as he gets more mobile will want to move around in his sleep and the chair us no good for this. I suspect he is falling asleep from sheer exhaustion and has already reached the point of being very overtired, which generally means a poor nap. Maybe try for a really early first nap since he is waking early, so if he wakes at 6:30 then try taking him to his room by 7:30 and starting the soothing process then. Allow a really long time for soothing, like at least 30 minutes. As they develop associations it speeds up but you have to put the groundwork in first. I bet you are exhausted right now, I know exactly how that feels. Maybe try lying down in the room with him while he has his first nap, you need the rest yourself, sleep deprivation is like a kind of torture. You will get there though I promise! <em>edited by kiwispiers on 10/04/2013</em>

Do you feed him when he wakes at 3am? I found with my son, the dreamfeed never really extended his sleep, his natural solid sleep stretch was between bedtime and around 3 am, once I gave up the dream feeding I just went to bed early too and we all got a good stretch of sleep until then. I also found that if I gave him the dummy, and he woke up an hour or so later, it generally meant he was in fact hungry so again, it was better to feed and not have to keep waking up. The other thing I found was that he needed an earlier bedtime than the EASY routines. I found the book Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child, much better in understanding sleep. It seems counter intuitive but the most effective way to fight an early wake up is with an EARLIER bedtime. I can't remember what it was at 4 months although I do know he had 4 naps a day during that time as his were only 45 min long and 3 naps just weren't enough, when he dropped to three and then two, his bedtime was as early as 5:30 at one point! 30 minutes isn't really long enough to count as a nap, it's not even a full sleep cycle. What you can try, is to extend the naps by staking out his room at the poi t where you expect he will wake and trying to soothe him into the next sleep cycle, patting ,rocking, popping in the dummy etc before he really wakes up properly. At 4 months they are just starting to switch from basing naps on awake time and tired signs, to more scheduled naps. The first morning nap is usually the best place to start, try giving this nap quite close to wake up time, after around 60 to 90 minutes of awake time and try to extend it by soothing. Also try not to have any naps that extend past 5 pm, bring bedtime earlier if need be. Books are helpful at times but its much better to actually watch your baby and figure out their natural sleep rhythms as they are not all the same. I also had ditched the feeding schedule completely by 4 months and just fed on cue, which was much better for my babies. I am a fan of sleeping schedules, but you do need to adapt them to your baby. <em>edited by kiwispiers on 09/04/2013</em>