Are bad habits formed during sleep regression?

[Beingblonde]

I think my 17 week old DS is going through the 4 month sleep regression. He's never slept through but used to go to bed between 6.30-7, and reliably would be asleep by 8. When he woke up before that time he would be quite easily settled with a dummy or even just some patting. He would then wake up once, twice or three times to be fed during the night and go back down very easily afterwards.

Oh the good old days! He's a nightmare to put down now, last night screaming hysterically at bedtime after his feed. I tried the dummy, patting, rocking, shhing but nothing worked. It's been going downhill for a couple of weeks but the last few nights have been unbearable, with him waking every hour and sometimes less than that and refusing everything but a feed to get him back to sleep. I am beyond exhausted. So my question is, since feeding is the only thing that works, should I just do it to get us through this phase (I hope), or am I just making things worse? There is literally NOTHING else that will calm him and he was screaming the house down last night :(

DH thinks I should just feed him and that when he comes out of the sleep regression he will sort himself out. Is this just wishful thinking?

TIA for any help! I feel terrible as I have no energy for ds at all during the day.

I think that 'sleep regression' is a misnomer in a lot of cases. Your baby is now bigger, more active and needs more energy as a result. I think 'hungry' is therefore a likely cause of why he's waking up so much. Luckily, when my DS was the same age in 2000, the advice was to start weaning at 16 weeks ... and I remember having a few nasty nights such as you describe closely followed by much better sleeping as he got stuck into solid food. Not much help for a mum today, admittedly, but it sounds like 'feeding' is necessary.... even if it ends up being all night long.

My DS has just gone through this. Started at 15 weeks and seems to be coming out of it now at nearly 19 weeks. Same thing - mad thrashing around and screaming after bedtime feed, refusing to be put down, waking halfway through the evening when he used to sleep 7ish til 11ish. We adopted a 'by any means necessary' approach. He wouldn't feed to sleep so for us it meant rocking him until he was in a deep sleep then putting him down very gently so as not to wake him. I fretted that I was undoing all my hard work putting him down almost asleep so he'd drop off in his cot.

The last few days he's slept through the evening again and been much calmer and easier to settle after the bedtime feed. He's also gone down drowsy a couple of times and fallen asleep in the cot with some shushing and patting. He is sleeping slightly longer stretches at night and whilst he's not back to normal, at least he's not waking every hour.

I haven't done anything differently, fed him more or given solids or formula. He just seems to have settled back down on his own. No harm in feeding a bit more though if it sends your baby off.

You have my sympathy - those 3-4 weeks were hellish - just as hard as the newborn bit, if not worse.