Is this sleep regression or new bad habits?

[wedontlikecrows]

Hi - this is my first post and I'm feeling a bit desperate! My second child is almost 17 weeks old. Since week 13 she has started waking for food (breast-fed) every 2 hours or even more often. She used to be on a three-four hour cycle. So I'm sleep deprived. In addition she has started hurting me quite badly when feeding. Finally, she is a very stubborn bottle refuser, whether it's EBF or formula, regardless of bottle or teat type.

I'd like at least one of these problems to be fixed, but a public health nurse told me yesterday that she couldn't think of any solutions. I could do with more sleep, so really I want to know if it's likely this phase will pass, particularly as we're now into the fourth week of it, or whether I've helped her create a series of new habits by feeding her on demand at night. Thanks for any suggestions.

We had a big four month sleep regression! Took a few weeks but suddenly she slept through again.

What is causing the pain when feeding? Does she have teeth already?

She doesn't have teeth - it seems that sometimes her latch is not great or she shifts it during the feed and ends up bruising or blistering me. She is very fierce when feeding - a little barracuda. The public health nurse checked for tongue tie and didn't find anything, she also said that dd probably was set in her ways by now and wouldn't really change her latch at this stage.

It just seems like it's a bit of a perfect storm at the moment - I can't get a break from the soreness or the tiredness because she won't take a bottle. The nurse left me feeling a big down-hearted by seeming to suggest there were no solutions but I've done some more reading here since posting and most people suggest it will probably pass! I just got a bit panicked because I have to go back go work at six months and am feeling I won't have had any fun quality time with her before that.

One of the best bits of advice I was given was to always break the latch if it became painful, and re-latch. Sometimes I had to do this dozens of times, but it was worth doing in the long run.

I do think you get used to it as well, as now my 11 month old only causes me real pain when he bites me :-)

And you will have lots of fun with your dd between now and 6 months, I'm sure of it!

My DTs are 19 weeksand touch wood and prays to the baby Jesus we seem to be coming out o the other side of the 4 month sleep regression which has left me practically on my knees. Latch also worsened for a bit.

We are back to 3 hourly(!) overnight (ish) and feeds have reduce in length back to 10-20 mins.

Agree with breaking latch repeatedly - t also helps if you don't let her get too hungry (difficult I know!!). Finally, try lots of different positions to vary where she latched on to reduce the pressure points. It gets better (although tonight not so much!)

Cranial osteopathy really improved our latch.

Thanks for all the replies. We had three sessions of cranial therapy already because of colic - no appreciable change. She takes herself on and off multiple times in a feed - part of the reason for the soreness- so sometimes we get the latch right and others not. If I think there is an end in sight then I think I can cope. It was when I thought there would be no joy until introduction to solids that I got a bit down because I was worried that by that stage any bad habits would have become ingrained. So it's a relief to hear from others that its normal for a phase like this to last a number of weeks. Thanks again!

One of the underlying causes of the 4 m regression is increased distractibility - ensure she's feeding often and enough during the day, tank her up!

Is she teething? My LO is only 10 weeks but showing signs of teething. The last few nights he's woken frequently. I took his fist chewing to indicate hunger, as usual, but I think some of the waking occasions were down to teething discomfort. I have been taking him for Cranial Osteopathy for his latch and the have said that he has a mis-coordination between his top and bottom jaw. He was responding to treatment, but this week they said he was less responsive and they thought it might be because of the beginning of teething.

Four month sleep regression. Lasted from about age 13 weeks to
19 weeks in our house. Beyond hideous. Still shudder at memory! She fixed herself, though. Still woke for feeds at night but slept properly in between.
Hope it gets better soon. Make sure you demand a lie in whenever possible.

Oh - agree, relatch if it's not right. Also if she's being fussy, how about about walking about while she's feeding, jiggling her and patting her bum? Mine used to get very cross in the evenings at that age and I found this approach really helped. Sort of lulled her into submission and she'd give up and feed properly.