4mo night/day sleep gone awry... suggestions?

[NumptyMum]

DD is 4mo and (luckily for us) had until recently been sleeping pretty well; she'd settle to bed around 7pm, wake around 2 and 5 for feeds and be up for the day around 7.30am. We were really lucky! She also had around 3 naps a day.

However a week ago this all went pear-shaped - she had a very long daytime nap (3hrs - one of those where we weren't really keeping track as we were playing with her 3yo brother, then realised she'd been asleep for ages) and now she's tending to wake after a midnight feed and be awake for over 1hr. I've tried over the last week to get her daytime naps back on track, but during the day she's really cranky as she's short of sleep, and is STILL waking overnight. And the daytimes are a nightmare too as she's grumpy and generally won't be happy doing anything unless it's being held in my arms...

Any ideas of what I should do?

She's kipping just now so I'm going to catch up on sleep but will check in here later...

Thanks!

Please??

Do I wake her from daytime naps even if she's then still sleepy and likely to be more sleep deprived, or do I let her sleep even if it means she may be more awake overnight?

Would really appreciate help, esp from anyone else who's had this...

...watches tumbleweed...

Hi - saw your post and wanted to mention that I've seen a lot of stuff on here about the 4 month sleep regression, when developmental changes the baby is going through affects their sleeping patterns, and they often wake up more. This could be what is going on for your DD? Maybe search mumsnet for some posts on it, think there are quite a few or google it?

Yes, it's most likely to be the 4 month sleep regression. Google it, sadly it's pretty horrendous for some people (ie us), others barely notice it. Her brain is going a million miles an hour and she's finding it tough to sleep. I'm afraid I never found the magic formula, just hunkered down and got through it. I did do quite a lot of co-sleeping to make sure I at least got some sleep, but it was tough.

ditto what headfairy said :(

we had miserable sleep from 13 weeks to 23 weeks old- frequent wakings etc. W co-slept to get through it, good news is at 23 weeks seemed to get better overnight, and we are back to 1 waking at 3am and she is back in her cot, and in her own room. There is light at the end of the tunnel!!

(well until the next regression/teething etc!!)

:o Scarlett - I'm just recovering from the 9 month regression now.. she did three weeks of waking hourly Damn near killed me! I must admit there came a point when the co-sleeping didn't help me because we both kept each other awake too much, so now my dd is back in her room, usually only wakes once at about 4am. I prop my eyes open with matchsticks and feed her rather than snuggling up in bed with her, but that has meant she goes back to sleep pretty pronto and sleeps until 7am.

Thanks so much! Glad to hear it's a stage, and not something we've inadvertently mucked up. I don't mind if she wakes to feed more (well, not much) but it's the staying awake that's hard. Luckily DS is in nursery a couple of days so I can catch up on sleep a bit then, but I guess it's early to bed for DD and me for the time being...

My DS is 4 mo and I goes to bed at 6.30pm, dreamfeeds at 10pm and then sleeps to 6.30/7.30am. I am not writing this to seem smug, but more because I am surprised that your LO is still waking twice in the night to be fed.

I am a really strong believer that sleeping/feeding does need to be structured if you want to sleep yourself! From my experience (and I did follow Gina with both boys), at 4mo your LO needs no more than 3 hours sleep in total a day. Sometimes my DS2 can be cranky when I wake him from sleeps, but I have found it is about 3 days of crankiness until they get used to it and personally I would prefer a fuller nights sleep!

With regards to the feeding, I also agree with Gina that they need to get all their calories from milk between 7am-7pm (+ dreamfeed) if they are to avoid waking at night. Could you perhaps fit an extra daytime feed in to eliminate a night feed?

addictedtofrazles, whilst you may not to want to appear as such, you are actually coming across as a little big smug. Why are you "surprised" a 4 month old baby is still waking twice a night to be fed? That is quite normal in my experience. The night time feedings aren't a problem for the OP, its the prolonged night wakings which are highly likely to be caused by the 4 month sleep regression.

Numptymum DD was awful at that age - she would wake for about 2 hours a couple of times a night. It did just pass though!

Twofalls - The OP has asked for ideas as to what she can do. I have suggested:

1. Cutting back daytime sleep to a max of 3 hours
2. feeding more in the day so that there is less need to wake in the night.

My intention is not to be smug but to say that I have done both the things above with a huge amount of perseverance and, as a result, my baby sleeps (2/3 naps in the day and 12 hours at night).

It just shows, however, that babies are all different, because in my experience it is not normal to have a 4mo wake twice in the night to be fed!

Addictedto - I would kill to have my DD sleep 3 hours during the day! Half that would be good! As for feeding more frequently, there's an old adage about leading horses to water. If they're not hungry, they're not hungry.

It's interesting OP, I think we're going through the dreaded sleep regression too. It also started for us with a marathon 3 hour daytime nap - the first, and last, time she ever slept in the day for more than 30 minutes. I wonder if there's a link?

But Gaelic it is not about feeding more frequently - I speak from experience of having a DS who is dairy intollerent and has silent reflux. I was feeding little and often and over the course of a day he was actually eating very little (and waking in the night). I saw the Paed and he insisted that at this age they learn feeding/sleeping habits and that I only let him feed for 30 mins and every 3-4 hours. It meant a lot of distraction and dummy use for 2 days and then he 'leanrt' that he needed to take a big,satisfying feed when food was offered as the next feed was not coming for 3-4 hours. Now he takes a full feed 5 times a day and has no reason to wake at night because he has had enough to eat. The only time I 'break' this rule is at his lunchtime sleep - he is 18weeks and possibly ready to be weaned (I however, am not ready!!). He has 6 oz at 11am and then I top him up with another 2-3 oz at 12pm before I put him to bed. It has meant he now sleeps better at lunchtime and has stopped waking.

I have replied to this thread as I have genuinely experienced the problem and have also resolved it so thought I would share what has worked for me!!

Exactly gaelic you can't force it down them. Also, the OP didn't ask for advice about weaning her DD off nighttime feeds as she was OK with feeding her in the night (because contrary to what gina would tell you, it is quite normal, honest) its the fact that her DD is waking and staying awake during that night that is the problem (we used to say DD was up "doing the fandango" because she was just so full of beans and then agitated, it sounded like she was rehearsing for Riverdance in her cot ).

One thing that did help a bit was making sure she got decent naps in the day - the less she slept in the day the worse she slept at night. I did resort to doing an awful lot of walking with her in the pram to get her to stay asleep because the more overtired she was the worse our nights were. So daytime sleep was the key but it was tough getting her to have more that an hour and half. I was on "operation daytime nap" for a good few weeks.

Your experience is interesting to me as my DD has reflux and I have found little and often to be best for her. It's certainly her natural pattern. I'm confused, are you breast or bottle feeding. You talk about times and ozs. I have no idea how I could make my DD stay on the breast for longer. Anyhow, if she takes too much (for her) she chucks it right back again.

Glad you managed to sort things out addicted.

Here is some info on sleep regression OP:
sleep regression

addicted - you are lucky that the 4mo regression seems not to be affecting you. We're also loosely following GF (boo hiss!) routines too and still our 19-wk old is currently waking at 4am. He's not crying or hungry, just very chatty. Eventually he nods off again but wakes hourly from 4am onwards. Previously he briefly did sleep through after the 11pm dream feed till about 6.30am.

He is eating enough during the day (although sometimes he's not interested in eating at 2.30/3pm) so as I said I don't believe it's hunger. He probably sleeps between 2-3 hrs in total most days.

I am not sure whether I should be trying to do something to rectify this or if it is the 4mo regression that just riding it out is the answer - and hopefully his previous sleeping habits will return?!

Hi, and thanks all for the various posts.

DD did have a good pattern that worked for us, which was around 3 naps a day of around 1hour each time, then going to bed around 7pm and waking a couple of times overnight. Sometimes this varied and she'd have a longer sleep (mainly if an earlier nap was disturbed for whatever reason, eg I help run playgroup and sometimes she'll sleep through it and sometimes she won't). However whatever happened with the naps during the day, she'd sleep OK overnight - yes, waking to feed but at least then going straight back to sleep, and as I bf I found the hormones got me straight back to sleep too! So the long daytime nap WAS longer than expected but sometimes she'd have a 2hour nap and be fine overnight. However her daytime naps the last week have been very deep, I've generally woken her from them after 1 to 1.5 hours but it hadn't helped her with not waking overnight so I was wondering what to do for the best. Still not sure, tbh! I know with DS that he went through a faze of more frequent feeds overnight as he was too distracted to feed during the day, at which point I started offering him bf every 3 hours in a quieter place (to minimise distraction/staring/wriggling) and perhaps that is one reason DD is feeding more at night, but I was really wondering how to turn her night back into night and her day back into day. Last night she slept well until 5am, so at least that was manageable. But then she's had her 3rd lot of jags today, so who knows what tonight will bring!

Will have a search through previous posts re 'sleep regression' and see what pointers there are to remedy this - but thanks again for all the replies, they are all appreciated.