So THIS is the 4 month regression hell 😭

[Shmerlock]

So I naively thought we'd hit the 4 month sleep regression a few weeks ago when my used-to-wake-once-a-night DD started fussing and waking 3/4 times. Oh how wrong I was!! She's now 21 weeks and since last weekend has been waking hourly, sometimes less than hourly, through the night and refusing to settle unless breastfed back to sleep. I am beyond exhausted and at my wits end. How do we overcome this stage!?!

I've tried rocking/bouncing/shushing to sleep - she'll nod off on me but the minute I start to lower her down she screams. If my partner tries to settle her she becomes hysterical!! We live in a terraced house and our poor neighbours must be as shattered as we are, you can hear everything through the walls.

Co-sleeping is not an option as she won't settle with that either - have tried before and it's a no go. Plus, she still wakes just as regularly 😫.

I love my DD so so much but my god this is making me feel so angry!!! Any advice appreciated!

@Shmerlock how’s it going? Any improvements yet?

Small wins here…our LO will go down drowsy again & has started doing a 3-4 hour stretch at the start of the night before the almost hourly wakes! Still not great compared to pre-regression sleep but at least it’s a start!

We are working with the sleep consultant to strengthen her routine before trying some gentle sleep training. She advocates something along the lines of controlled crying but starting with very small intervals and capping the time you are willing to let her cry in total. I’m nervous about this but the change in our LOs awareness has been dramatic the past few weeks & I can see how as she grows it will only become more difficult to do this!

Braving myself for a bumpy couple of weeks to Christmas 🙈 🤶

@Seahorse87 unfortunately not, if anything they're now worse 😫. She now wakes every hour and a half, sometimes less, all through the night. Then from about 4am she seems adamant it's time to start the day. She barely naps, I've just given up on another nap as she's screaming at me because she just won't go down. We're really at our wits end with it now, I was in tears the other night out of pure exhaustion and frustration. I think we're going to seek some advice from a sleep consultant too!

Pleased to hear things are improving! Xx

Ahhh the 4am start is a thing here too! Trying our best to keep her down until 7am so naps can be at a consistent time each day, but sometimes it’s just not possible.

Are you using wake windows? Currently we have about 2hrs awake time before she’s too tired, a nice round number at least for the moment, it helps us gauge when she’s likely to be tired and get her down quickly. We are using a mini bedtime routine to try establish some cues (into sleeping bag, story, white noise on) but still feeding to sleep for now (currently nap trapped as she wouldn’t be put down this afternoon!) or else going for a walk.

We had a few weeks where I couldn’t set her down for naps at all (all fed to sleep) and the pram & car didn’t work. It was really tough but I think what helped us was just going with that for a few weeks to stop her getting overtired & into a bit of a rhythm, then once she was more content & we had the timings sussed we managed to get her sleeping in the pram again & her naps massively improved!

I used the Lucy Wolfe book as a starting point, it’s overwhelming but I find a lot of the principles she uses are very good & it’s helped us massively with daytime sleep. She is realistic & advocates a gentle approach. We just need a bit of extra help sussing nights.

Btw our HV told us to put her in her own room as she thinks this will help…considering it but not sure if I want to move her out just yet! She’ll be 6 months end of January so will muddle through to then.

P. S. @Shmerlock if feeding to sleep is working for you for naps, could you set up a comfy spot on the sofa & watch some Christmas movies while your LO naps on you? That way you could get a break but feel like you were getting some festive you-time as well?

Appreciate this thread is a few months old, but have PP since seen an improvement in sleep?

My 6mo is 2 months into the 4mo sleep regression. Biggest stretch we've had in that time is 3hrs, but it's usually 2 and sometimes 1. Shattered!

@Calphurnia88 hello! This was my thread (I've name changed since!). My baby girl is now almost 14 months and her sleep is still very hit and miss - some nights we can have 4, 5 hour stretches. Other nights (like last night!!) she was up every hour and a half!!!! I find that nursery, illness, teething all have a massive impact. We've never had a full night's sleep though - not since 4 months! But the nights vary - some are horrendous and others not as bad! Sending solidarity!!

Have you tried playing a bit of music or sounds in the background? Moshi has a good range of tracks on it. Worth a try x

Thanks for replying! Sorry to hear it's not got much better, but hopefully you're on the final leg of it. Meanwhile I've just got out of the starting blocks.

Assuming you're back at work now, any coping mechanisms you can share for the lack of sleep? Outside of coffee haha.

@Calphurnia88 haha aah sending you all the caffeine!! Honestly she's up and down which makes it slightly easier to cope - most of the time 🙈!!

Yeah I returned full time this September - primary teacher so it's been a bit of a shock to the system!! I can't lie, there were a few mornings I had a little cry out of exhaustion (pre-children's arrival haha!!). Honestly, caffeine and being kind to myself. Recognising that I'm not going to be as lively as I was pre-baby!! And also talking to colleagues - they've been so supportive and just absolutely lovely!! Helps so much! Xx

We actually sleep trained at around 5months and after 3 nights our LO only ever woke 1 or 2 times a night again, and since around 7/8months has slept through with no wakes bar the odd night we get one with teething or sickness. We do get the odd 5am wake and have accepted our LO is more likely to do 10/11 hours rather than the 12 that some babies seem to.

I know sleep training gets bad press and I can’t say there were no tears but we didn’t leave her to cry, always responded but just laid firm boundaries and it worked. I hated doing it but we are all so much better rested and happier for it!

@Seahorse87 hello! I remember your lovely comments on this post early on! So pleased to hear things improved for you!

We tried sleep training and it just didn't work well at all, but at the same time we discovered our baby had multiple allergies!! So it then became difficult to know whether she was crying from the allergy or wanting to be fed to sleep!!

Now her allergies are under control we're planning on giving it another go! Just need her to be well haha since starting nursery she's been constantly poorly with bugs!!

Hey! So I posted a response in this thread back in Nov- I was originally luckyelephant1 but have since name changed. We were going though hell with the regression, similar situation to you where even 8 weeks from when it started she was still waking every 1-2 hours, sometimes as bad as every 45 minutes.

Honestly, sleep train. At 6 months we moved her into her own room and cot (as opposed to bedside crib) which was the plan anyway, sleep regression or not. She'd always been good at going to bed easily with white noise, but with the wake ups we did a sort of combo of ferber and pick up/put down, leaving longer and longer intervals of crying but never more than 10 minutes of continuous crying. It was 2 nights of hell from what I remember but it worked and she went down to 1 or 2 wakeups a night mainly just for a quick boob feed and then straight back to sleep.

Shes now 14 months- think we've had a couple of minor regressions since but nothing as bad as that 4 month one and she now usually sleeps through the night. We're all so much happier for it!

@TeainanIV awh sorry to hear about the allergies! Can sympathise as we have a CMPA and egg-allergic baby too…but thankfully she’s avoided any major issues as a result. We haven’t been able to start the milk ladder yet because sickness, teething etc keep getting in the way, so totally get on ya on needing that window where things are ok to address the sleep! Really hope it goes as well for you as it did for us!!

@Housenoob sounds so similar to us! Glad you got your sanity back too 😊

@Calphurnia88 just a note of solidarity…it is so tough not getting enough sleep and it will pass. But if your little one has a sleep crutch like ours did (feeding, rocking, etc to sleep) you will need some sort of strategy to help them learn to go to sleep themselves. Form experience and speaking to a lot of other mums over the past year about this, I haven’t heard on any just magically sleeping through after this regression (or even longer stings) - it is generally multiple wakes to 1/2 years plus (and up to 5 years in some cases 🙈) or they learn to go to sleep themselves and generally sleep through somewhere between 6-10months bar teething or illness. It can be daunting to start but lots of support on here if you need it 😊 and lots of gentle training methods to avoid crying it out if you don’t want to do that!

Thanks for all the responses, appreciate I have revived an old thread!

I know many parents who have sleep trained, and show no judgement, but I don't think I could personally do it with my DS. He is quite a sensitive soul and I don't think I (or he) could handle the crying. Unless any of you used any gentle solutions that didn't involve crying?