4 month old keeps waking up!

[Dontjumptoconclusions]

I am so tired I'm a walking zombie and any advice would be helpful!

My absolutely gorgeous 4 month old little boy struggles to link his sleep cycles. He cat naps during the day 30 mins at a time for about 5 naps a day.

Night times, I put him down around 7.30pm and he wakes every hour or every 2 hours until 6am (sometimes wakes up within 20 mins, 40 mins, 50 mins)... I feed him to sleep (formula) if its been more than 2 hours since his last feed. Overall he has about 13 hours of sleep a day.

For bedtime I put him in his cot awake. He puts his fingers in his mouth and babbles to himself and falls asleep on his own after about 20 mins. So he can sleep on his own. At night time, it feels like he just needs a nudge into the next sleep cycle, I'll pick him up for about 2 mins (patting and rocking) and he will fall asleep, until he decides to wake again.

I've tried the pick up and put down, which has had varying results. The shush pat method hurts my back if I'm there for a while. But judging by how he can fall asleep on his own at bedtime, he can put himself to sleep.. So why is this not working in the middle of the night? Dream feeding makes no difference.

I think he's going through the 4 month sleep regression, do i sleep train during the regression? Wait til its over?

I have also seen the wake to sleep method... Anyone tried this?

Just to add, every so often, he sleeps for about 4 hours non stop... I don't know what I do or what he does to make this happen, but it's a pleasant surprise every few weeks!

Sounds like the 4-month sleep regression to me! We chose to sleep train at that point using the “sleep ladder” approach (minimal but increasing interventions every 5 minutes of crying, starting with a gentle shhhhh, then saying goodnight it’s night-time, then patting back, then picking up, then feeding if needs be). It worked for us within about a week. I have friends who did Ferber at that age too which I think is a perfectly valid approach if you’re at your wits end!

He’s tiny and the 4 month sleep regression is a bitch. You can’t sleep train a 4 month old. What does that mean to you? Leaving him to cry? Hoping he’ll self settle? It’s exhausting but it’s completely normal so maximise your sleep or rest when you can and believe it’ll pass. Because it will.

Have you tried white noise? Is he the right temperature throughout the night?

At such a young age they need comfort and reassurance. There are things you can try like white noise but you’ll drive yourself mad treating his waking as a problem that needs to be fixed. Some babies wake often. For some that goes on a long time. It’s hard but you can’t pick the type of baby you get. Loads of us have been there and survived it, you just have to keep going.

No one advocates sleep training at 4 months. Not even Ferber.

I thought sleep training was for the regression? I thought that the way to get through the regression was to teach him to self settle?
I may have misunderstood the point of sleep training then.
And how does the regression end? Just one night they end up sleeping through, and that's it?

Yeah, one day you just sleep better and then that's it till the next one. It's weird.

I wouldn't sleep train at such an early age, it's a development leap and it's all part & parcel of them growing up. Just go with it, it does get better eventually, until then there's always coffee/cola/wine/gin.

They wake up because that's what babies do. It's hard, but it's perfectly normal. An increase in waking is part of the 4m sleep regression.

I don't know much about sleep training as I'm not keen on it, so never did it, but either way, it's unlikely that the 4m regression will end and your baby will sleep through, as it's pretty unusual for a baby that young to sleep so well.

Sleep isn't linear, and it's a marathon not a sprint. Your are likely to have periods of better and worse sleep sporadically for a couple of years before they start permanently sleeping through.

All I can suggest is that your don't share the load with your partner irrespective of who works - that's the beauty of a formula feed baby (thus is from a mum who FF her first and shared all nights, and who bf her second and had since night feeds for every night for 2 years).

Loads of people never sleep train. It’s a new idea in human history. Babies are a lot of work and they wake up a lot. It’s what they do. They need comfort and reassurance, milk and cuddles, singing etc. They can’t self settle at 4 months. It’s a development thing and comes over time. If you do anything that involves leaving him to cry he might learn not to bother if you don’t go to him but he won’t learn to self settle. It’s not possible at such a young age.

He’s unlikely to go from the occasional 4 hour block to sleeping through the whole night but the blocks should get more frequent and longer, and things will get better, then be disrupted by teething and other development, and then be better again. It probably won’t be linear.

No one ever said it was easy and I do sympathise. But try to remember what he’s doing is completely normal and natural - if exhausting for you - and he’ll develop at his own pace. Adults don’t “sleep through” most of the time. They stir and then fall asleep again. While some 4 month olds sleep a good few hours in a row it’s actually safer for a young baby to wake up off and on. He’s not doing anything unusual or naughty, he’s no different to millions and billions of other babies his age and older. He doesn’t know it’s 2021 and you’ve got stuff to be getting on with during the day. He’s a normal baby and behaving like a normal baby since humans began.

Yeah, 4 month sleep regression. Its so hard!! Fwiw when my son got through the other side of this (think the worst of it lasted a couple of weeks) he started sleeping through for the first time.

The other thing about sleep training is it’s not a one time thing. Even people who think it’s “worked” “ often have to do it again and again.

Leaving a baby to cry raises their cortisol levels and can be damaging to their development.

Thank you for your comments everyone. I keep reading about babies who at this age are sleeping 5-6hours non stop, thinking that I'm doing something wrong. So I'm happy this is normal!

Didnt know that sleep training was just a recent thing. I'm was under the impression that if I don't sleep train, he will never learn to sleep properly. Glad I'm wrong about this!

Definitely not looking at leaving him to cry for any period of time. I was looking at more of the shush pat method and the pick up, put down method for training (which after this thread, I'm thinking there's probably no point in doing).

For solidarity, if you’re on Facebook try the beyond sleep training group.

You’re not doing anything wrong or unusual and neither is your son. He hasn’t been in the world long and he’s doing what babies do