4.5 months, awful sleep - can anyone advise or consol

[pingulingo]

This is awfully long, sorry. But if anyone can relate or advise to any of the sleep issues below I would be v grateful!

Baby is nearly 20 weeks and has always gone to bed late (1am, gradually moved to 11pm-ish) and we were getting a block of sleep at night, til about 6/7am but not any more. Naps have always been patchy but now arent as bad. No routine, he will nap from 20mins to 3 hours and has 3 - 4 naps a day.

I'm aware of the 4 month sleep regression and night time sleep has deteriorated since Xmas. He is going to sleep at 11pm and waking religiously at 2am despite what time his last feed is. He then wakes up through night and then has a lie in to catch up with sleep - eg last night, up almost every hour, then slept from 6am - midday!

I've tried waking him up early to try shifting his body clock forward but didnt seem to be working, has anyone done this? How long did it take you to see results?

Also now when he wakes in night he wakes up screaming and doesnt stop until I feed him, which is usually a bottle at 2am. He doesnt always open eyes and I've tried waking him fully but nothing stops the screaming - he doesnt ever do this at any other time.

His sleep is disturbed in night and he has short cries in his sleep that dont always wake him - but do wake me. My DH works shifts and isnt keen to live in spare room. I dont know if I should be waking baby or not when cries arent waking baby?

Any suggestions? Thanks!

It sounds a bit like he still has day and night confused. He is having a big block of sleep during the day which ideally he should be having at night. My DD is in bed at 7pm. 1am sounds very late. I would just try and make sure at night you are doing everything quietly with a night light. Then making sure baby has feed, activity, sleep - repeat until bedtime

(((hugs))) hun sounds like the little man's bodyclock is all out of whack!

It certainly sounds like he may be overtired (disturbed sleep in night) & I am actually wondering if the screaming could be night terrors, esp if he is screaming in his sleep. IIWM I definitely wouldn't wake him. You might find once your routine is adjusted he will stop the crying.

OK so I would definitely agree he needs his day shifting earlier. Your attempts to wake him earlier may not have helped if he was already overtired, because you are cutting his night sleep even shorter IYSWIM? How long did you try this for & how much earlier did you wake him?

It may well be that you need to do this very slowly, waking him maybe 15mins earlier every 5 days/week. If you do it too quickly he will get very overtired & it could backfire. It may take quite a long time for you to reach your desired wakeup time (weeks, possibly even couple of months) so you need to be prepared for this & remain consistent.

I also think that establishing some kind of regular routine will really help his nights. At his age I would typically expect him to be awake for around 1.75-2hrs & having 2x 2hr naps plus a short catnap. So: a few questions:

Is midday a typical time for him to be waking up?

What is your ideal WU time & BT? eg 7am-7pm or 8am-8pm?

Can you log the next couple of days & post them on here so we can see what time he gets up, when he naps & how long for & when he goes to bed.

I will be happy to try & help you along the way.

Thanks for the replies. Midday is late even for DS to wake, he usually wakes anywhere between 8.30am - 10.30am. Ideally I would like an 8-8, but even when DS was sleeping better, a total of 9-9.5 hours was the best we would get at night (with 1 feed somewhere in there).

I try to be consistent with his napping, he manages about 1.5 hours (longer if out) before needing a nap. But because his nap times are so erratic, some naps are 45mins long, then others are up to a couple of hours which then throws everything out. Before Xmas I tried to limit the length of naps but it made no difference to bedtime and I ended up pacing for ages with a cranky baby!

We do feed, activity, sleep, (feed, sleep in the middle of night)
I think I will try to move things more gradually by maybe shifting his morning wake up, and hopefully his bedtime will eventually creep forward. I was logging his waking/naps but went out of window when the all-nighters started! Will keep track for a couple of days & come back to post. Thanks again