4 month sleep regression

We had a back to normal night last night! Please let this be the end of it! yay!! fingers crossed for you 2blossom!

I kind of agree with pentel, he already has formed an association between feeding and going back to sleep so don't worry about setting up a bad habit, just forget the crying for a few weeks and focus on getting more sleep yourself by soothing him straight away. I think if he has teething pain and eczema its not a good time to try and work on self soothing, some babies can't do this until they are older anyway and breastfeeding does have an analgesic effect so it is helping ease his pain. Take him to bed with you at some point in the night at least (for me it was at around 3am) you find that when he stirs you can usually just pat or cuddle him and he will go back to sleep without being fed. The hourly waking lasted 3 weeks with Ben, it was truly awful! Try an earlier bedtime too if you haven't; already (like 5:30pm), sometimes works.

oh no! first tooth and eczema is not going to help! I know you said that his daytime naps are good but sometimes if you start with the day then the night can sort itself out, at this age my DD could only go 90 mins max inbetween naps, so I would have to start soothing her after 75 mins for her to be falling asleep at the 90 min mark. Longer than this and she would get overtired and although she would eventually fall asleep she wouldn't sleep for as long or settle as easy at bedtime, the tiredness seemed to accumulate. If a baby misses the window to fall asleep "nicely" then they become stressed and release the stress hormone cortisol then, as a reaction they release adrenaline to "mop" it up and this leads to them fighting sleep and getting a bit wired, the sleep they eventually fall into is not restful and they will wake easily and often... could this be happening? Only other advice I can give is to try teething powders whilst he's teething, get one made with camomile extract and use it morning, noon and before bed (nicknamed baby crack here for the positive mood it put DD in!!) and put some oats in the bath water to help soothe the eczema, also paw paw cream is sposed to be good (try the Organic Supermarket) Are you able to nurse lying down? Another option (just to get you through this stage) is to have him in the bed with you so you can nurse without having to get up and down all night.. it's been nearly 2 weeks now? Just to whatever is necessary to get through this and get the most sleep.

you'll probably see the next tooth in a few days and he might calm down a bit after that, try some pamol before bed or the first time he wakes.

2blossom... how are things with the sleeping?

sorry I must have misread, I thought you meant you went in after 10 minutes and then left again and then came back after another 10 minutes if she was still crying etc until she stopped.

There is a big difference between controlled crying, and guiding a baby to self settle. A lot of it depends on listening to your baby's cry, and after only 1-2 hrs she couldn't be hungry. Also as she got older it was clear when she was just protesting because she didn't want to sleep. Controlled crying encourages u to walk in and out every 5 mins and gradually build up time till they cry themselves to sleep, which seems just mean! The specialist I spoke to said, that as long as they are protesting it is safe to ignore for 10-15 mins, but don't let it escalate to a strong emotional cry. If it does to go in an calm them without picking them up. It was amazing how much giving a quick drink of water calms her down! She really didn't protest for long, and the older they get the more aware they are, and know how to get what they want. It was getting to the point my 6mth old would actually laugh when we picked her up! She was really playing us, and was just using the feed out of habit. Controlled crying is teasing, whereas self settling is like dealing with a temper tantrum. They cannot protest cry for very long, and was gone in 3 days, only once per night, half hour max. Tell ur baby what u are doing, they understand more than we give them credit for! Of course if they are really crying you still sit with your baby and soothe them till they go to sleep, just recognizing the difference. <em>edited by Twinkle Violet on 31/05/2011</em>

Twinkle violet isn't going in every 10 minutes controlled crying?

I didn't know abt sleep regression till afterwards, and my bub is 7.5 mths now! She was sleeping thru perfectly from 6wks till 4 mths, then started waking 1-2 times a night. Usually she'd go back down straight after a feed so didn't worry too much, but this got worse closer till she was 6mths. She had started solids (but not much) and also started her on part formula, to see if it was hunger. I agree I think it was developmental too, but was getting hard to live with. We also went travelling at this point, so it was easier to just feed her thru the night. Tho the real trouble started when we got home as she woke up every hour for a week, till we called a 24 hr helpline. We were told that we'd allowed her to become dependent on food to fall asleep (even tho she'd self settled earlier) she was now expecting food. So we had to get her to relearn self-settling. We didn't use 'controlled crying' as she is too young, but it did involve not feeding her or picking her up. She did cry, but we went in every 10 mins to soothe her, wipe her face and give her water. It was hard, but in 3 days she's now sleeping thru again.

there you go..... the bright side of all those disturbed nights sleep - finding old friends!

ha, ok this has got me intrigued.. <em>edited by kiwispiers on 29/05/2011</em>

too weird, he is 32

Funny, DH is from Rotorua, he went to Lakes High.

Yep from NZ, and funnily enough we went back when he was 4 months and the regression hit as soon as we got back here. I thought it was jetlag for the first few weeks :(. Doubly hard to deal with when you are jetlagged yourself. Try getting your baby out in the sun for a few minutes first thing in the morning and a couple more times a day just in case it is playing a part in it. Are you a kiwi or just married to one?

I know what you mean, as much as you miss the sleep, sometimes you look down at your baby feeding so peacefully and can't imagine missing out of that even if it is 3am :). Honestly, I know some baby's are great sleepers but a LOT of people really truly lie about how well their babies are sleeping because there is so much pressure to have a baby that "sleeps through the night" as though you have failed if they don't. I'm a really light sleeper, so it didn't surprise me that my baby was the same but my MIL asks me every single time we talk, and tells me she is "shocked" when I tell her the truth that he still wakes for a night feed quite often, from talking to my friends, once you admit your baby isn't sleeping, you'll find that it's true for most to varying degrees. Oh well, he was an early crawler and I joked that it was because he had so much more awake time to practice ;). Enjoy every moment, my guy is 9 months now and it has gone far too fast!

Except be very careful with a 4 hourly routine with an EBF baby. WHO don't recommend it. Not every woman lets down enough milk per feeding for this to be enough and it can cause your supply to drop.

anmd it happened to me as well, from my DS was 4 until just over 6 months!! i thought i was gonna go crazy as he would wake up every 2 hours and even if i fed him he wouldnt settle.. i tried to feed him more often during the day thinking it would fill him up for the night-didnt work..i had no problems getting him to sleep during the day but nightime was a struggle. he is almost 7 months now and this is the second week of him sleeping through-tocuh wood. i talked to a nurse when he was 6 months and she said that i was feeding him to often,i should feed every 4 hours and the morning and evening should end at same time. so now he wakes up around 7 am and eats every 4 hours,has a nap in between, i was also on "house arrest for 7-10 days, as all his naps had to be in his cot. i couldnt believe my eyes when the first time i put him down during the day he only cried for 2 min and then settled himself and fell asleep. I used to pat him to sleep before..hope this helps,not sure if u have a routine or not yet but this def worked for me. Good luck!

It happened to me sometime around 4/5 months and I won't scare you by telling you how long it lasted but it does end I promise. Like Pentel I'm not personally into CIO sleep training before 9 months if at all (for me I wanted to wait until DS showed he could understand object permanence and would know if I didn't come it didn't mean I was gone forever) but my SIL has a baby almost identical in age and she did the whole gina ford with CIO (both baby's went pear shaped at the same time) as well as medicating for reflux, going to an osteopath, and spending a lot of money on homeopathic something, and both babies resolved at the same time too so I'm a little bit of the opinion that it is developmental to a certain extent. Healthy sleep habits like routines and bedtime sleep cues from day one are great though as is figuring out the right nap times/lengths and bedtimes for your baby and putting them down before they get overtired. It may or may not be helpful to know that by 6 months more than 50% of babies are still not sleeping through the night (and sleeping through the night is defined as a 5 hour stretch) and 30% are still not at 9 months. You are certainly not alone in this one! Introducing solids had ZERO impact on sleep for us (and we were very quickly onto large amounts as DS is super enthusiastic about his food) nor did crawling, in fact it made things worse when he could stand up in his cot but not get back down again :( Sorry to be doom and gloom, the good news is from this point your baby is going to become more lovely and interactive every day, rolling over, sitting up, laughing at your jokes. I thought my baby was lovely at 4 months but now, at 9 months we can play chasing each other games, he understands simple instructions e.g come here, sit down, dance, clap hands etc and its just so much fun, all this makes the sleep deprivation easier to swallow and then when it ends it feels like a special treat ;) edited to add, my baby and my niece are equally happy and attached so I'm not suggesting that CIO techniques will damage your baby in any way, they're just not for me. <em>edited by kiwispiers on 27/05/2011</em>

2blossom - I just wanted to to say I am in the same boat as you. My DD is just over 4 months and up most nights at least 4 times to feed. Generally she goes back to sleep in her own cot if I stay awake long enough to remember. I have lost count of how long this has been going on for...at about 2 and a half months she slept through the night for 2 and a half weeks! Although I am beginning to wonder if I dreamt it. Pentel - thanks for advice - it helps to think through how I am dealing with it.