4 months old - does this get any better?

[Glitterb]

My little girl has just turned 4 months and I presume is going through the dreaded sleep regression, it is pure hell!

For reference she is still a baby who needs a lot of sleep during the day as well as sleeping through the night. If she doesn’t get the sleep then she is unbearable. For the past 2/3 weeks she will only catnap during the day for maybe 20 mins then wake up wide awake and then 10 mins later start whinging about being tired again. I have tried everything to get her to sleep, I even walked over 7 miles yesterday with the pram in the hope of some sleep for her. She won’t contact nap anymore unless she is completely burnt out which usually happens around 4pm. She is sleeping through the night, maybe waking once so does this sound like sleep regression or could it be teeth? This stage is harder than the newborn stage as she is just so miserable all the time! Does it end? 😫 shes currently in her cot whinging about sleep but refusing cuddles to sleep!

Hey, Have you tried Calpol and/or Nurofen?
Could be her teeth . Any signs of any?

No signs of any but she is drooling a lot. I’ve not tried any calpol as yet but might try if she is still unsettled when she wakes up!

Hi OP! Your baby sounds similar to my little girl, who for a long time between four and seven months would only sleep for 30 minutes at a time in the day. I had to feed her to sleep for every nap and it was a very, very hard period of time for us sleep-wise, so solidarity with you and well done for making it this far.
I too tried walking with baby in the pram for hours at a time. In the end, what we found hugely helpful was a sling. Even if your baby won’t contact nap, could you pop her in a sling whilst you get on with jobs? Or listen to a podcast/watch something you enjoy, so you can have some downtime? I know it feels less than ideal (I naively thought by four months that I’d put baby in her cot, walk away and get on with other things for an hour!) but looking back I realise that my baby needed this. She wasn’t a baby that could be put down in the cot and that’s okay. All babies are different.
Fast forward to now (she is nine and a half months) and she does nap in the cot and doesn’t rely on feeding to sleep, or being in the sling. What you are experiencing now is very, very difficult but it will get better. I know that is not helpful to hear but please, be kind to yourself, recognise that you are doing your absolute best and it is not your fault that your baby won’t sleep. Some babies take longer to get the hang of it and I don’t believe it is anything we do or don’t do that makes the difference.
That being said, the only other suggestion I would make is to have a set wake up time each day. We saw a real change in the predictability of our daughter’s sleeping pattern when we all started our day at 7:00 (which is easier said than done following a tough night)!
My advice is, do what works now, even if it goes against what you thought you’d do, what your friends do, and what Mumsnet advises. Good luck and give yourself a big pat on the back. You are doing amazingly!