4 month old daughter stopped sleeping well (a bit long)

[catwhiskers10]

When my daughter was a newborn she would sleep 12 hours at a stretch, waking twice in the night for feeds then go straight back down to sleep again as well as sleeping a lot during the day (mostly after feeds).
From around 6 weeks she slept from about 8pm-4am, woke for a feed then straight back to sleep till 8am with no naps during the day.
At 12 weeks she became very restless in the night and began to wake 2 hourly, the only thing that would send her back to sleep was being fed (she is BF)coincidentally it was around this time we gave her a dummy due to her needing to comfort suck at the breast for long periods without feeding.
I was told by the health visitor it was the heat, then that it was a growth spurt, she is now 19 weeks old and worse than ever during the night, waking every couple of hours and lying moaning most of the night and only having a short nap during the day. She has just cut 2 teeth so i know that this will have a lot to do with it also.
Has anyone else had a similar experience and what did you do?

Hi there. It's really normal for them to have a sleep regression at around 4 months as they go through a big development surge. It will settle down, but it may go on for a while - sorry! Just feed her when she wants and maybe try her with some teething gel/calpol for her teeth as it is so painful when they come through.

DS1 did this although wasn't teething at the same time but it settled and then sleep improved further when we started weaning him at 6 months.

Maybe try to encourage her to nap in the day though - I think they tend to need a sleep not long after they first wake up - about 1.5 hours after, then another usually longer one around lunch time.

Hope that helps.

Yes, there is a 4 month sleep regression. More info here, here, here and here.

My DS went from waking once or twice to waking 3 or 4 times a night. I just kept on feeding him every time he woke. After a few weeks he just went back to waking once or twice - I didn't do anything different.

I think the lack of daytime naps is probably the biggest issue, though. Most babies this age can only stay awake 1.5 - 2 hours before needing another sleep. If they stay awake for longer than this, they get overtired which means they are too 'wired' to be able to stay asleep - hence the frequent waking at night.

I think at 3 months babies are 'supposed' to have 5-6 hours of daytime sleep, across 2 or 3 naps. By 6 months, that reduces to 3 or 4 hours of daytime sleep. Many, though, like my DS, are short nappers so they don't get quite this much as they don't have any long naps. I think at 4 months he was having 4 x 30-45 min naps a day.

HTH.