4.5 month old DD poor sleeper - What am I doing wrong?

[babababa280810]

Hi All
This is the first time I am posting on here but the sleep deprivation is kicking in and feeling desperate.

My DD is 4.5 months old and EBF. She hasn't slept through the night yet (fine - or is it? Whats normal for an EBF baby of this age?) but the times she wakes in the night are so random. We have bad nights and very bad nights with the odd good night with only one feed after the dreamfeed.

Last nights she went to bed at 6.30 (She is so tired she can't keep awake until 7.00pm. I dreamfeed her at 10.30 - She sleeps very well until midnight then wakes every 2 hours. Sometimes ready to start the day at 4.00am (like this morning) After an hour or rocking she went back to sleep for another hour until 6am(but i didn't!)

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong and it just causes fallouts with my DP as he often manages to sleep through the crying or can't remember how many times we have been up in the night.

I resent EBF some days as I thought I was trying to give DD the best but all its meant is I haven't ever slept much past midnight since she was born and have terrible anxiety about sleep. (she refuses bottles of expressed milk & formula)

I've tried extra blankets as thought she might be cold. When she wakes I tend to offer her a feed as sometimes it gets her back to sleep quickly (and stops the crying which I stress about as sure neighbours can hear - which further adds to my anxiety)

Anyone been in the same boat? What can I do? Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Thanks

I don't know if this will make you feel better or not but what you're describing is totally normal, you are not doing anything wrong. 4 months is a tricky age, a lot of babies regress a bit with their sleep at this age.

There's no proof that formula top-ups or early weaning will help with sleep, in fact they can make it worse by upsetting your DD's stomach. Feeding her when she wakes up is absolutely fine and will not get her into any bad habits.

It's just a case of waiting it out, I'm afraid! It doesn't usually last long. Would you consider co-sleeping ? I found it a godsend, I got loads of sleep that way.

You are not alone!

I co-slept til ds was 5 months old, so the frequent wakings weren't such an issue. His sleep got really bad around 18-21 weeks as babies often do. Eventually what we did is move him into his own room and fed him at 10.30pm and 3am/4am - if he woke in between those times DP went in to him and rocked him back to sleep without feeding. Took a week/10 days to work!

If he wakes between 5am-7am I still just bring him back into bed with me and feed/doze together - that usually gets us an extra hour or two.

He's never slept through either - I'm not really expecting that til he's over 6 months and well established on three meals a day.

Thanks for your posts everyone! Hopefully she will get better on her own. MoonUNit - It did start about 18 weeks so hopefully shouldn't be too long now :/

My contacts with babies (one EFB and one FF) both have babies who sleep through the night and have done since they were much younger than DD. This plus the books I have read = anxiety about DD

DD usually ends up in bed with us at 4am.

Hang in there - it will get better. And don't worry too much about what other babies are doing, I too was surrounded by babies who slept through the night from a very early age, whereas my DD (also EBF) had me up all hours. My DD is now 5 and a half months and has just started to sleep from 11pm until 6:30am, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Best advice I got was to help your LO learn to self-settle - at her age if she is feeding well during the day she should not need more than a couple of feeds a night max, so any chance that you are being used as a human dummy?

Yes, very normal - you could have been describing my DD at that age.

At almost 12mo, she still hasn't slept through, but now usually only wakes once in the night.

Loads of babies don't sleep through for a long time and there's only so much you can do about it. What you're doing now sounds fine.

The best thing you can do is try and stop stressing about the missed sleep - I can now manage on 5 hours of broken sleep per night quite cheerfully. Your body adapts.

And it will pass sooner or later.

One more thing - don't blame it on the breastfeeding. Plenty of FF babies don't have great sleeping patterns either.

Also, beware of encouraging the baby not to need a feed to settle. Although that's great in many ways, if you hit an unsettled period and the baby will no longer settle with a feed you can be at a loss for what else to use. It's nature's way! You can wean off that habit when your LO's a bit older...

HTH

Good luck

Thanks Sleeplesssister

She is feeding well during the day and always has a big feed just before bed. She takes a big dreamfeed (do you still dreamfeed?)

I tend to try her for food as it's the easiest thing in the small hours of the morning (but fear its become a 'human dummy' habit like you said)

How did you help your LO self settle?

If DD is tired enough (i.e. 6.30ish) she has once or twice got herself off to sleep with a small fuss. Other times its full on screams.

Thanks for your posts - nice to just know i'm not alone :)

I have exactly the same thing at the moment so you are definitely not alone! DS is 19 weeks and sleeps in 2 3 hour chunks for the first part of the night, then every 2 hours from about 1 onwards. sometimes a dummy will settle him, sometimes only a feed will do. Very occasionally he will self settle, but that is v rare. I don't really know how to encourage him to either, as everytime I have tried the mythical put down dozy or shh/pat it has just resulted in screaming. hey ho. It will pass.