4 month old waking every hour.....

[Jazmyn]

Up until now my DS was a little angel at sleeping, from around 1 month old he went to bed at 7 after a bath and a big feed and slept through until midnight then fed and slept until 3am then woke mumbling but not crying every 3 hrs for a quick feed and straight back to sleep until 7am when he woke properly.

Now he is being a little pest!! He sleeps through until 11 or 12 in the first session then after that has started waking every hour crying, feeds, falls asleep and wakes again after 45 mins to an hour.... I'm shattered!!! It doesnt seem to matter if I feed him two sucks or two whole boobs!!

Any suggestions?? Why has my angelic son been replaced by a little devil? I thought possibly it was teeth but there's no other signs of that.

Erm i may be old fashioned IMO he is hungry I began my DS on baby rice and BM at 4 months with his bedtime feed and he slept much better.

4 month growth spurt, he'll probably settle down again in a week or so, your milk is far more calorific than any baby rice/veg etc, and lots of calories are what he needs to grow.

I'm not sure it's a growth spurt as he is eating a lot LESS now than he was a week ago, noticably so.... with his other growth spurts he was asking to be fed every hour and a half during the day and emptying both my boobs... now he has probably about half as much each feed during the day and also he eats less at night.

There is a 4-month sleep regression (Google it or search on m-net - you'll find dozens of threads) to do with both growth spurt and developmental burst. His brain is fizzing and he needs you overnight! It will settle down again, but for now it'll be lots of feeds and cuddles during the night. Agree with RobynLou - your milk is infinitely better than trying to start solids, as a 16-week old gut can't actually digest anything but milk. I would try giving more feeds during the day - feeding little and often is usually designed to boost your supply.

Octavia - thanks, THATS why I love MN!! Brilliant and I never knew about that sleep regression thing, my friends baby is 3 weeks older than mine and he did the same thing.

I shall try sticking my boob in his mouth whenever he opens it, even if he's not asking :P

Not planning on giving anything until 5.5mts earliest but he does get to lick my banana sometimes (in the least possible dodgy sounding way!).

Ah yes, sounds like the 4 month sleep regression to me too. Good article about it on askmoxie:

moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/2006/02/qa_what_are_sle.html

Mine did it too. It gets better after a while. Took mine until 7 months to sleep though properly again (sorry, I imagine that's not what you want to hear...), but since then she's slept fantastically, 10-12 hours a night. Bliss.

Thanks Bobby, aah 7 months isnt too bad.... that's only 3 more :-/

I've heard a lot of people say theirs started sleeping through once they were on solids post 6 months, we shall see.... it's not a huge problem now I know the reason, might just go back to co-sleeping which will annoy DH as we'd just got him sleeping in his own room!!! :-)

btw that link doesnt seem to work?

My now 5.5 month old was the same, at 4 months she was doing 7 - 5! Then she had a growth spurt and put on 2 pounds in a month and everything hit the fan.
After her growth spurt ended she began teething and cut her first 2 teeth at 5 months.

She was waking EVERY hour. Almost sent me insane :(
She is doing better now and a few nights ago she slept till 1:30, whooo!!

Anyway...for YOUR little one, let her get through the growth spurt and if still bothered could be teething??