15 week old waking

[amatuermummy]

This is my first post on here, but I've been lurking for a while. I wonder if anyone has any suggestions for me - my 15 week old dd has just started waking up loads at night. We put her to bed at between 8:00pm and 8:30pm, she goes in her cot awake and I pat her back for about 5 minutes until she falls asleep. We then get her up at about 11:00pm - 11:30pm for a last feed (she usually only takes about 3-4oz). She then sleeps till about 3:00am - 4:00am but after that she wakes up every 30 minutes to an hour. When I go in to her, most of the time her eyes are still closed, I put her dummy back in her mouth and re-wrap her swaddle (which she won't sleep without) and then she goes straight back to sleep.

I don't think she's hungry because, when I offer her food, she takes about 1/2oz and then falls back to sleep and when she does get up in the morning, at about 6:30, she never seems very hungry with her first bottle.

I was wondering if anyone has any advice - if anyone has been through anything similar. Up until now, she's been a brilliant sleeper, it's just been the last week. Not sure if I should try to put her down without swaddling in case she's getting uncomfortable? Should I make her wake up properly the first time she wakes and feed her? could she be teething?

Sorry for the long post, I don't know if I've explained things properly, but just hoping for some help.

First of all, my sympathies are with you. It can be a bit alarming when this happens and sleep deprivation is horrible.

Yes she could be teething but it's really common for them to go through a developmental spurt at 4 months or so. If you google '4 month sleep regression' you'll see loads of stuff about it like this and loads of threads on here as well.

I don't actually know what you can really do about it unfortunately, but sometimes just knowing it's normal helps a tiny bit. Basically at some point she will learn to settle without you or without the dummy. How this happens/how you help her to do this will depend on your approach to parenting. My personal opinion is that this is too young for any kind of sleep 'training' and I think you probably need to accept that it will happen for a while and carry on doing what you're doing. You could try without the swaddling and see what happens.

The other thing you could consider is taking her into bed with you (following safety guidlines) and see if she settles better. We certainly did this quite a lot at that age. She is 2 now and never asks to come into bed with us so don't worry about 'habit forming' or whatever.

It's the 4 month sleep regression. And it's normal. Her little brain is working on some big developmental milestones and sleep just goes by the wayside for a while.

Do whatever you need to get through it and don't worry about bad habits.

Thanks for your replies, I have put her down for her morning nap without swaddling and she has been sound asleep for a couple of hours. I think I'll try without the swaddle tonight - we thought she was comforted by it, but maybe she's grown out of it now. It does help to know that it's normal and should pass. Thanks again.