Good night sleep gone bad...

[SouthernCrossedStar]

Hi, I hope someone can give me some positive feedback as I'm almost at the end of my tether!

My dd is 19 weeks old and her sleep has progressively got worse to the point where she now wakes up every 1.5 to 2 hours for a feed but more often than not it's a comfort suck...

What is distressing me is that she used to be a brilliant night time sleeper, at around 10 weeks she went 10 hrs for about 5 nights. Since then she has started waking up more and more. She never used to sleep much during the day but now I have got her to take 3 naps by rocking her until she is very drowsy and then putting her in her cot. Sometimes she falls asleep before I get her in and I hadn't been too worried. I also nurse her to sleep when she wakes in the night (this is more because she literally feeds until she is full then instantly pulls off the breast and is asleep - even with the comfort suck she will only do it for a few minutes then pull off and be asleep).

I don't think it's the 4 month sleep regression as she started this spiral down around 11-12 weeks.

My question is - (sorry to take long to get there) do I need to help her to learn to sleep through, has anyone had any experience of just riding this out and their LO learning to sleep through again?

Not all babies do their sleep regression at exactly 4 months so I reckon it is that. It's all about being more aware of their surroundings and realising that the way they fell asleep - in mums arms, boob, bottle etc, is no longer where they are, and they need it again to go back to sleep. Some babies never regress because they never fell asleep on the boob or while being rocked. Could you try waking her ever so slightly after she comes off the boob so that she goes down 'on her own'? That will mean she doesn't expect you there when she comes into light sleep, which is in 1.5-2 hour cycles, exactly as your dd is doing.

Also 5 nights in a row of good sleep doesn't mean it's going to continue - it's just a 'good time'. It sounds awful but you need to reset your mental clock to hope for more like 6-7 hours in a row then it won't seem so awful. And go back to sleeping when she sleeps during the day.

Losing sleep is awful, isn't it? I'm here because my 18 mo has taken to waking up at 1am and refusing to go back to sleep for hours on end - it was 3 hours last night. Then she got up at 6.30 as normal. I work ft, god help me!

thanks Kenobi. I am not hoping for the 10 hours again (that would surely be a miracle!) just scared that I am doing something wrong...

She is currently sleeping in with us and the few times I have tried to wake her a little before putting her in her cot she has started screaming and so I end up picking her up. I am hoping to move her to her own room soon so I can spend some time helping to get to sleep without being anxious about keeping my husband awake!

I hope things improve with your LO soon. I am dreading going back to work to be honest at the moment with the lack of sleep - I don't know how you're surviving!

agh, awful as it sounds, you've got to get her a little more awake if you can. Sounds to me like you need to make the move to her room, then do some little experiments, perhaps sleep in with her for a couple of nights. www.babywhisperer.com is good for this sort of thing.

How am I surviving? I'm about to post and you'll see...