Desperate after a v bad night - is this the 4-month regression?

[lbandrb]

DS is 4.5 months and has never been a great sleeper, day or night. He has silent reflux and is on Ranitidine, which seems to be managing his symptoms very well. But I often wonder how much of his sleep issues are behavioural and whether some are reflux, and now I am in despair trying to work it out.

Last night he threw every 'trick' in the book at us (I say this knowing it's not willful):

Difficult to get to sleep (had a bad day of naps so I think was overtired).
Awake after 45 minutes, again tricky to get back to sleep.

Awake after that about 10 minutes later.
Awake another 2-2.5 hours after that, at which point I fed him as I figured he might be hungry and was upset even when held.
Screamed every time I tried to put him down in his cot after this. Eventually got him to sleep.
At another wake-up I got him back to sleep OK but he kept waking up v soon after going to sleep.

After that the night is a really hideous blur, till at some point mid-morning DH took over, and had exactly the same issues. DS might go to sleep eventually but only for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes at best.

Some of the time he woke up just chatting away, but generally he quickly got upset.

I've had basically no sleep and just can't face another night of this, for anyone's sake. And am really concerned he just won't catch up via his day sleep (as naps are all v short) and the situation will worsen.

Not every night right now is like this, but most have elements of it. Is this really the regression? Seems so extreme.

The regression can be very extreme - ds was an amazing sleeper up to 17wks with just one wake up to feed, overnight he became completely different, I could be up 8 times or more and he suddenly became dependent on milk to resettle which he hadn't before. I really hope I am not jinxing it by saying that very recently (he's now 28wks) things have massively improved, this week I have only been up once each night. He sometimes wakes in the evening but no longer needs a feed to resettle so it is much quicker to help him back to sleep.

I hope this gives you some encouragement that you will come out the other side at some point. I have made a few changes which may have helped, they were: moving his bedtime feed to the start of the bedtime routine instead of doing it just before putting him down, making sure he had decent naps in the day, not letting him fall asleep while feeding and putting him down awake after every night feed, introducing a comforter, helping him learn to self settle at bedtime, playing white noise. Of course you never know if it's something you've done or that they've just grown out of that stage but I would say moving the bedtime feed and putting him down awake after each night feed coincided with the most dramatic improvement. I found The No-Cry Sleep Solution very helpful but also did a bit of experimenting.

I really hope things improve for you, I know how horrible it is and you feel like you'll never sleep well again but one day it will happen. On really bad nights co-sleeping got me enough sleep to manage the next day.

Thank you for your great response, Littlebagoflaughter. Very helpful! Encouraging to hear you got through the regression OK, but how long it took... Yikes! We realise now that DS has a cold and that is what must have been affecting him so badly over the past day. We've given him a chest rub and he seems to be breathing much easier now, so hopefully that helps. Also bought nasal drops and will give Calpol tonight.

Been trying to implement some No-Cry Solutions and today also been giving The Baby Whisperer some serious consideration. The tone of the book is so depressing, though... It makes me feel just terrible about my contributions to DS's sleep issues. Need to avoid getting really low about all this as I know it won't help, but sometimes right now it's so hard...