Is this the 4 month sleep regression?

[Carrotcake89]

For the past couple of weeks my DS has become a really grizzly unhappy baby for seemingly no reason. He will cry (and I mean really cry - red in the face, rash, snot everywhere etc) for large chunks of time, especially late afternoon and into the evening and is very hard to console to the point that he will only settle on me (which is upsetting my husband) and even that doesn’t always work. At first I attributed it to teething as we have the classic excessive drool, hands constantly in mouth and he will quite aggressively chomp on anything he can get his hands on. But I am not convinced it’s that as he has no swelling in the gums and I can’t see / feeling anything coming through.

Night sleep has also been getting worse. He used to do 4.5hrs as a first stint of sleep and then 3 hours and then sleep in 2hr blocks which I was finding totally manageable and was starting to feel like myself again. But now he is doing 3hrs as a first chunk and then any sleep after that is all over the place (1hr - 2.5hr chunks). I used to put him in his next to me awake with a dummy and with some soothing from me he’d go to sleep, but now he screams when I put him down, even if I’ve fed him to sleep and put him down he just wakes up and fusses straight away. It also seems like it takes a while for him to get into a deep sleep as he fidgets about when for ages when he eventually does fall asleep. Day sleep has just started going tits up too with naps of 20-45 mins and he now needs feeding or rocking to sleep as he cries when I put him down.

I guess I just want to know if this is normal and classic symptoms of the sleep regression and if so do I need to do anything to help him? He is CMPI and I cut out dairy and soy from my diet 8 weeks ago which has led to a much happier baby (didn’t change his sleep though) so I’m worried it’s another intolerance and I’ll have to cut more out of my diet which I really don’t want to have to do. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you

Yes it sounds like the 4 month sleep regression to me. It's a tough one. Babies go through SOOOO much between 3-6 months so my advice is to not expect much stability in sleep or moods for the next little while. (A lot happens between 6-12 months too, and 12+ months, tbf.... babies are hard!!).

Hi OP. I could of written this post myself. I’m going through exactly the same thing with my 15 week old little boy. He is now waking hourly over night, will settle back down with dummy/shhhh/patting but exhausting. Have you found anything that has worked for you? My little boy goes into his next to me awake and settles himself to sleep fine but in the night it’s a different story. I’m 9 days in and it’s like he has just suddenly forgotten how to settle himself back to sleep!! X

I’m sad to say we are still very much deep in it with every daytime nap a huge battle with horrendous screaming despite the fact that he is rocked and held to sleep. He pretty much point blank refuses the dummy now if he thinks it’s because I’m trying to get him to nap, but will happily take it when he’s in the pram etc. I’ve mostly given up trying to be strict with naps and just wear him in the sling a lot and walk him in his pram so we can get sleep in, otherwise by the evening it’s just chaos as he gets so overtired he screams for hours.

Evenings are also tough. I have to feed him to sleep as he cries now when he goes into the next to me awake and wakes frequently needing feeding / rocking to sleep. Fortunately we’ve only have a few nights where it’s been hourly, but mostly it’s ever 2hrs atm with no long stint at the beginning anymore and lots of two hours wakes between 2-4am. I’m so tired and have no clue what to do to improve the situation as he won’t settle on his own without a dummy but he clamps his mouth shut when I try to encourage him to use it. I’ve tried everything 😲Feel like we’ve taken a huge step backwards as he used to settle really well on his own with the dummy.

Sorry not to offer any words of wisdom, but you’re def not alone!