Question about baby sleep

[mexico98]

Just wondering if this is normal I’m a first time mum to DS who’s 4 months old

The past 3/4 weeks he’s been quite reluctant to go in his bedside cot, he only wants to sleep on me or next to me meaning I’m not really sleeping apart from the ODD nap I can get while DH takes over

My mum said it’s a phase and it just do whatever you need to get through any phase

but I spoke to someone I know who has a baby 4 days younger than DS. She said he’s sleeping through sleeps 10 hours and it made me feel like such a failure :(

Ds used to sleep 9-3 then have a bottle then sleep until 7/8. It’s just changed this past month it’s really hard

is there anything I can do to help him?

He’s been having solo naps in the day I persist with putting him down. But of a night after trying to get him in his bedside cot for hours I give in and let him stay with me so I can at least get an hour or two

i feel so guilty why can’t I get him to sleep well am I doing something wrong

You are absolutely NOT doing anything wrong…a person cannot force another person (no matter how tiny!) to sleep so please know that however your baby sleeps or doesn’t sleep has nothing to do with you being a good parent, you aren’t failing at all. It sounds like you are being responsive to baby’s needs which is not failing in the slightest.

4 months is a really common time for sleep to go a bit haywire, my son was sleeping through 8-10hrs a night until about 3ish months. Some people find that this phase lasts around 6 weeks (so I’ve heard!) but for others it goes on a bit longer.

DS is now 8 months and his sleep has been variable since about 3 months BUT in that time he has learnt to roll both ways, started solids, started sitting independently, learnt to crawl, grown nearly 6 teeth, and probably loads more. It’s understandable that their sleep is affected by all these things.

I’ve found Lyndsey Hookway on Instagram to be very helpful, also her book ‘let’s talk about your new family’s sleep’ is great.

Keep looking after yourself and resting when you can, sleep deprivation is very hard but it sounds like you are doing a great job. I’ve found leaning in to contact naps, feeding to sleep, and co-sleeping has significantly improved all of our sleep but obviously every family is different.

It's normal and you are not doing anything wrong. It's very common at 4 months for baby's to sleep less easily. If anything your friend's baby that sleeps through is less normal.

Personally I'd do what you can to get sleep - if that's having the baby in with you then I would do it. Better than being too exhausted to function.

Sounds like a normal sleep regression phase. Or developmental leap. Look up wonder weeks might help explain.
Also agree with above done compare my sisters child slept through the night from 4 weeks my LG however still wakes for feeds at 11 weeks

Mums please help!!

My 9 month old is not sleeping as usual. I try to keep to a routine - bath and nurse to sleep by around 7/7:30pm. He would normally fall to sleep breastfeeding within 15-20 minutes. He’s now fighting with me to stay on the breast, trying his hardest to get away from me, screaming. It’s taking 1-2 hours to get him to sleep which means he’s losing out on sleep as he still wakes up at the same time every morning (7am).

I have tried to transition him from bed sharing to his own cot by getting him to sleep in there and disappearing when he sleeps but he wakes soon after screaming when he finds I’ve left him. I’ve tried to put him in awake, he screams. I’ve tried to stay with him in the room but not look at him, he stands up in the cot and plays.

I’ve tried later bedtimes as I thought maybe I was reading the signs wrong and he’s not tired but if I let him play he screams that he’s tired.

Feeling useless and fed up. Please send help.. the goal is just to get him to sleep easily again, I don’t mind bed-sharing or if he sleeps in his cot, just that he sleeps😫

Other than that he sleeps ok through the night, waking a few times but goes back to sleep which I don’t mind.

@shoaibsmumma feeling fed up and useless is so much harder when you are sleep deprived isn’t it! You aren’t useless at all though, it sounds like you are doing a fab job.

I haven’t got much advice but as you’ve said later bedtime didn’t work have you tried reducing day time sleep? Could it be that he is tired but he is getting too much sleep overall in a 24hr period?

Also, might not be the case for you but for us a bath just doesn’t work as part of bedtime routine as it hypes him up too much and just ends in being too excitable or in tears - either way it takes longer to settle. So we’ve moved bathtime earlier and have about 1.5hrs between bath and bed, obviously you know your little one best though.