3/4 month old screaming at bedtime

[FTM2B1]

My little girl is 15 weeks (17 if you adjust for due date). She is combination fed and had been into the way of waking once in the night fir a feed around 3am but otherwise sleeping from 8ish through til 7. We used to be able to bath her, feed her, pop her in her next to me crib do a few stories and then she'd fall asleep no problem. In the last week or so bedtime has been traumatic. Our otherwise happy little girl now screams her head off when it's time to go into her crib. We do the bedtime routine with no issues, but as soon as she's in the crib she has a meltdown. Twice we have managed to stroke her brow and gently shush her to sleep but other nights I've ended up breastfeeding her until she falls asleep then transferring to the crib. This usually gets us about 4 hours of her sleeping before she wakes and again won't settle in the crib. I've checked the crib mayress, sheets etc and nothing has changed or is damaged.

Could this be the 4 month sleep regression or could there be something else I'm missing? Does anyone have any advice either on how to make things better for her, or to reassure us that it's a passing phase and she won't be miserable at bedtime forever?

TIA

It could be the sleep regression. It might be that they’ve just started getting that bit more aware of you and not wanting to be apart from you. I think it’s quite normal to need help getting to sleep and you’re not doing anything wrong by feeding (unless it’s not working for you). That said, even if it’s normal, it’s still really hard! I hope it fixes itself naturally for you, but otherwise just make the changes that make your life easier while tolerating the new normal

So we moved bed time forward an hour did bath, bottle, book, bed. Said "night night baby it's time for sleep now" and went and stood outside the room and... she put herself to sleep. That's been pretty consistent for the past few days. So I don't know if its a fluke, if that's a new development or if she's been able to self settle for a while now and we have been annoying her by hovering over her trying to get her to sleep. Either way bed times have been much less stressful.

You are probably out of the regression now. I was in exactly the same position about a month ago when my DS was 4 months. He was screaming before every nap and bedtime sleep for about a week, I very nearly lost my marbles. But thankfully, it's over and done with now and he sleeps mostly very well aside from one or two dummy runs around 5/6am!

Hope things carry on going well for you