4 month old ds waking more frequently

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From about 12 weeks ds has slept a good solid 6 hours at night, sometimes 7/8 (he has even been known to do 9 on a rare occasion!), depending on the time he has gone down. Recently, however, he has been waking after just 3 or 4 hours and won't re settle til he has had a feed. He is then waking again at 4am (ish) and won't go back to sleep properly, he just dozes til it's time to get up.

I know this is probably a lot of sleep to some of you poor souls who's dc's don't sleep so long at all, but this isn't a very long sleep at all for my ds.

What I want to know is, has anyone experienced this regression and how long does it last?

I don't know myself but this reckons 2-6 weeks. My DD is 12 weeks - not looking forward to this!

Yup, sounds like classic 4 month sleep regression. Google it/ search it on here - you'll see dozens and dozens of posts. Mine hit at 3.5 months and now, at 5.5 month we're still not anywhere close the days when she used to sleep through (8pm - 5am). On a good night we get two or three wakings. On a bad one 6+. The time she wakes up for the day is totally unpredictable, which also makes life challenging.

Be wary of establishing any new sleep associations as you ride the regression. I didn't really realise what was going on at the beginning, so fed DD every time she woke up thus setting up a pretty rigid feed-to-sleep association and also cemented the habitual nature of some of her wakings. Some gentle sleep training around 5 months (no longer feeding to sleep at bedtime and helping her learn to self-settle) helped a bit, as did putting her in a cot in her own room at 5.5 months, prior to that I coped by co-sleeping and learning to bf lying down.

4m is a classic growth spurt, so he needs a bit more milk until it settles down again.