My 4.5 mo has been "sleeping" from 7pm through to about 4-5am for pretty much a month now. "Hoorah!" you'd think, but for the last three weeks she's been waking up after every sleep cycle and she cant self settle. The only thing that gets her to sleep is the dummy so I'm having to wake up every hour to pop the dummy back in her mouth. I'm knackered. At least when she needed feeding more often she would sleep for 3 or 4 hours in one chunk! I was going to try and wean her off the dummy but gave up very quickly - the gentle method suggested in the no cry sleep solution just didn't work and the other day I tried not giving her the dummy but staying with her, patting, shushing etc. she got extremely upset and after 45 minutes I gave her the dummy back. I don't want to let her cry.
She was also getting really good at napping during the day, doing a really long nap in the mornings but now she only does that if I hover over her at the 45-minute mark to pop the dummy back in before she wakes fully. When she just does several shorter naps she's super grumpy.
I'm hoping very very very much that things will get better once she has enough co-ordination to put the dummy back in herself. If I'm lucky she'll learn in the next month and I'll sew dummies onto each corner of her Cuski so she can always find one but her hand/arm skills ain't looking that encouraging at the mo...
I can accept that she needs a dummy (prefer that to a thumb) and that she's not able to self settle, but why is she suddenly waking up so often when she used to be ok for a few hours at a time???
Can anyone reassure me? Please tell me this is a phase! I'm more tired now than when she was newborn. 