4 Month Sleep Regression. help!

[LouisMummy123]

So my little boy is 18 weeks old and so far he has been a fantastic sleeper. In previous weeks he's been sleeping through the night, a full 12 hours only waking briefly for a feed.

I've kept a good sleep routine with him from being about 5 weeks - he goes to bed at 6, I put him down drowsy and he settles himself with his dummy. This has worked amazingly for so long however this last week I have a grouchy, sleepy baby that refuses to sleep in the day and wakes up crying every single hour during the night.

The poor little fella must be exhausted and the only advice I've seen is "put him to bed earlier" or "introduce routine"... He has an early bedtime and he's had solid routine since such a young age... I'm struggling as I don't know whether his routine is wrong? Does he need to go to bed later? Even earlier?

I don't want to go down the co-sleeping route as he's normally very happy to sleep in his own bed and I'm so scared of squashing him as I'm so tired. Does anyone have any suggestions to help me? I'm a first time mum and I don't have many mum friends that I feel confident to confide in. I'm so so tired and I'm just a bit fed up of reading conflicting views on the Internet.

What has worked for everyone else?

Thank you for reading! Haha

[trebleclef101]

Not much advice I'm afraid but plenty of sympathy, we've been through the 4 month regression and it can be a nightmare!

Sounds like you had a great sleeper before the regression so you may just need to grin and bear it for a couple of weeks. I would suggest sticking with your routine throughout even if your LO isn't playing ball, and he should settle back in to the routine after the regression has passed.

My only other advice would be don't do what I did and get into the habit of feeding your LO to sleep every time they wake. My DD can be quite hard to settle at night without a feed and doing it 2 4 10 times a night didn't exactly help!

Good luck and hang in there, it does pass