Sleeping/feeding advice please!

[jemz2310]

FTM in need of advice please!
DD is 18 weeks, since day 1 has pretty much fed hourly. As we got towards 8-9 weeks she was doing a 4 hour stretch at night followed by usually 2-3 hour stretches. At 9 weeks we went to center parcs with family for the weekend, tried our best to keep routine as close to normal but by the last night she was really not happy and has not had a decent stretch since!
Fast forward to 18 weeks, I'm luckynof I get a 2 hour stretch overnight twice a week, she feeds every 60-90 minutes overnight generally. We have been cosleeping as it was the only way I was getting any sleep, however I'm getting even less now! She will not sleep in her cot next to me, her naps have reduced down to 30 mins if I'm lucky, these are all contact naps now, if I try to put her down mid nap she wakes straight away, yet only 10 days ago due would nap for 1-2 hours at a time after her initial feed to sleep. She will only feed to sleep, won't settle for Dad, is EBF, refuses a bottle or dummy... we are persevering with bottle!
Is this normal? Any ideas to improve any of this?
TIA from a very tired mama!

Sounds like a 4 month sleep regression to me! It looks like you have a settling issue as your first problem. I would look up some gentle 4 month sleep training methods to start to impliment.

Alternatively, wait 2 months and then start on the "quicker" sleep training.

We also had a feed to sleep association. I would try and knock it on the head asap - though easier said than done! The more you encourage the breaking of the habit, the easier it will be for you.

Is she teething? When my boy started he was waking every couple of hours at least. It does end though.

4 month sleep regression. Awful.

I'm in it too right now with my second child and here's what I'm doing:

• Feeding a lot during the day to be sure not to get baby into a cycle of taking most calories at night which will exacerbate the situation.
• Trying not to feed too much at night (aiming to give 2 big feeds like before the regression, otherwise trying to bounce on exercise ball back to sleep, or bounce to almost asleep then tiny bit of nursing to fall asleep)
• Helping him practice sucking on his hand during the day as a future self soothing tool
• When he wakes, I give him 2-5 minutes (depends on if he's getting upset or just fussing) to try and self soothe back to sleep. He almost never succeeds but it's good practice for him as studies show parents who give their babies ~3 minutes to settle tend to develop better self soothing skills as they grow up whereas parents who immediately respond to every fuss have babies who actually lose their self soothing skills over time.
• Keep trying to get him back in his cot as much as possible. We usually cosleep for him to fall asleep at bedtime now, then I transfer him 1 hour later when he's well asleep. Put him back in cot after each wake-up except I cosleep for the final stretch of the night (usually around 5am) when his sleep pressure is low. I find when he's in his cot we both sleep better.
• Some nights it doesn't work out and we cosleep most of the night but I keep persevering and it seems to be getting better (we are a week into the 4 month sleep regression and he was waking 5-6 times a night at first, now down to 3 times)
• Try for really good naps in a dark room in the day. Ours are currently all contact naps in his baby carrier on the exercise ball. The only way he'll sleep longer than 30-45 mins at the moment.

I hope that makes sense and fyi you're doing great! This is one of the hardest moments with a new baby as they're too young to really put themselves to sleep but too big to easily rock to sleep/hold for an hour waiting for deep sleep.

With my firstborn, I didn't know all this, and her sleep was beyond awful for 2 months, then we did sleep training at 5.5 months and she was a great sleeper after that (now 3 and still a great sleeper). We will do the same with my son but I think given he's already responding well to what I'm doing (above), probably sleep training will be a bit easier with him as I can already see him making progress on sucking his hand, rubbing his cheek/grobag to help himself fall back asleep at night.

I used the e-book Precious Little Sleep to learn now to do our sleep training as I was desperate and it was very helpful. Also found this helpful sleeplady.com/newborn-sleep/4-month-sleep-regression-end/ and the Science of Mom blog on sleep is really interesting too.

Good luck! Persevere!

Also great advice from previous poster as well!

@ChildWontStopGrowing thank you for your response.
We have been keeping an eye and think she possibly has bottom teeth thinking about making an entrance although she doesn't appear to be uncomfortable at all with it.
I'm not sure how we ended up feeding to sleep as it was never the intention and in the early days she actually settled better with dad (his 2nd, my 1st!). My mum has managed to get her to sleep a couple of times but only when DD has got herself worked up and overtired from refusing to nap.
I'll look into some gentle sleep training thank you 😊

@Endlesslaundry123 thank you so much, not sure how I missed your post earlier. I've got loads to look at and work on, thank you!!