Controlled crying at 4 months old.

[Writerwannabe83]

Bedtimes have become a nightmare for me - DS just refuses to sleep.

Last night it took 4 hours for him go fall asleep once we had started his bedtime routine. That's a long 4 hours of grizzling, crying and screaming.

He will cry and cry in his Crib but the minute I pick him up, he stops. He looks at me, gives me a huge smile and a lovely laugh and starts flailing his arms and legs everywhere like he wants to play.

I calm him down and put him back in his crib and the crying starts again.

It goes on and on and on and on. He cries, I pick him up, he laughs/smiles, I put him back down, he cries again, I pick him up again, he laugh/smiles - you get the picture.

I offer feeds and change his nappy in between all these pick ups and put downs to ensure there's no reason for his screaming but absolutely nothing makes any difference.

Me and DH are nearly at breaking point - we just can't maintain this anymore.

Normally the pattern goes in for 2.5 hours but last nights record 4 hours just bought it home how insane it is.

Once he does go to sleep (usually from exhaustion) he sleeps very well. His first stretch will be 5-6 hours, then he has a feed, then sleeps again for another 3 hours. It's just getting him to sleep is the problem.

I spoke to a HV today who suggested we try controlled crying. She said to carry out his bedtime routine, pop him in his crib, turn the lights down and then for me to go and sit out on the landing. She advised that once DS starts crying to leave him for a minute before going back in, and I'm not to pick him up but just pat him for reassurance and then leave again. She told me to just keep doing this and prepare myself for having to go in and out about 50 times. She said it can be hard emotionally but after a week there should be a huge improvement in getting DS to sleep.

I don't know how I feel about it, but I know I can't spend 4 hours every night just picking him up and putting him down.

Has anyone else ever done it this early?

And if not, how did you deal with problems as bad as this?

Breakingbuddhist I think I need to copy your post into word, print it out and read it from time to time! It's easy to become fixated on not feeding to sleep when everyone seems to tell you it's such a bad habit but like you say they are tiny for such a short time and I think when I look back, all the times I rocked him/fed to sleep and he fell asleep in my arms will be what I remember.

Exactly tea - why are we so quick to take their infancy away from them by trying to enforce structure and routine. For now, I'm just going to enjoy my baby, follow his leads and mother him in a way that feels right and natural to me.

I bought him up at 9pm and fed him to sleep. He's now in his Cot and still asleep. I still can't relax though as I'm so used to him suddenly waking up and screaming, but for now I'm just going to enjoy the moment

lemonfolly Glad it worked for you!
It has been much more successful at producing burps with my bubs than back patting/rubbing, which could go on for hours with no success!

breakingbuddhist your post also made me stop and think. I can't feed to sleep because mine pops off the boob full of beans when he's full, but it did remind me that he is not doing this to annoy me and "this too shall pass"

perfectstorm - re "my baby infected me with both thrush and staph infections in my breasts"

Your baby didn't infect you with thrush - he was not born with a yeast infection in his mouth. You got thrush because your nipples were warm, wet, and covered with milk and hence provided a good environment for a yeast infection. Then you gave it to your baby. Similarly with staph infection, your nipples would be the initial site of infection, not your baby's mouth.

"They certainly weren't restricted to the nipples - in fact a key symptom is "deep breast pain""

Any infection has the potential to enter into deep tissue and blood stream if left to fester for long enough. That is not what we are talking about, though.

wiggly - What I think is 'amazing' is that I have told you that your 'studies' don't exist and you haven't even acknowledged it, let alone tried to find some that actually exist.

Anyway, I prefer amazong these days. It has more of a zong to it

Both my babies have developed thrush before I got it

Writer - What I mean by "sleeping through" is sleeping all night without waking me up

After two days of sleep training, DD started sleeping through at 4 months - she would sleep at 9 PM and not wake up at all until about 8-9 AM.

I'm glad that your baby is now going to sleep easier and is sleeping for longer stretches, and I'm not saying you should do this. Just that it is possible if you want to do it in the future.

OK fledermouse, I'm not an expert on what happened to you. This is what I was told by the doctor at the time when I got thrush with breastfeeding - that I am the most likely origin of the thrush as the adult with all sorts of pathogens already living on me, and that the baby is more of a clean slate.

I'm sure I read somewhere, or was told, that in young babies going 5-6 hours is considered as 'sleeping through'. At one point DS was going 9 hours between feeds overnight (9pm-6am) but obviously he was waking me up for his 6am feed. By your logic though that would mean that even going 9 hours between feeds and sleeping for 8 of them, it still isn't 'sleeping through' because ultimately he woke me up

Not sure what you mean by "your logic". Surely "sleeping through the night" refers to not waking up until it's time to get up for the day, like what most adults do. I am aware that some people try to redefine this as "sleeping for 5-6 hours" but that usually happens between 7 PM and 2-3 AM and doesn't help with parents' sleep deprivation.

Btw, I'm not judging your baby's sleep habits, just answered the question you asked me: "cote - what do you class as sleeping through?"

Perfectly fine if you are happy with a 6 AM wake-up (most parents of babies would probably kill for that ) but if you want a later wake-up time, you could try not responding to her for a while, thereby pushing her feeding time by a couple of minutes every day. We did this when DD started waking up at 5 AM at some point and it worked.

The sttn definition kind of evolves as they get older, doesn't it? Ds is 2, goes to bed at 7.30-8 & sleeps 12 hours. He sttn, as is reasonable of a 2 yr old.

For a 4 month old, going from 10pm dream feed to morning is as good as you could hope for, I'd say.

For a 6 week old, cluster feeding all evening & zonking out at midnight for 6 hours is pretty good going.

They can all be sttn but not necessarily at the other ages.

How was your evening op?

"Pretty good" is not the same thing as sleeping through the night, though, is it? By definition, "sleeping through" means not waking up.

"For a 4 month old, going from 10pm dream feed to morning is as good as you could hope for, I'd say. "

Absolutely not true. Quite a few babies sleep through (without waking up) on their own by 4 months, and out of the rest, some are sleep-trained like DD was.

It all depends on what parents feel they can live with.

Hello OP, haven't had chance to read through this thread but I just wanted to say my 15 week oldies rarely in bed before 10pm/11pm and my son was the same at this age. It's normal! Babies this age often only cat nap through the day as well. Just enjoy your baby and don't worry for now. My son developed his own routine as he got older. My daughter is still downstairs with us for now, or if really sleepy she's upstairs. I also feed her to sleep too! Who cares!? Having a two year old, I know this time flies by so quickly. Stop torturing yourself and just follow what works x

Thanks Oly

Last night was another really good night and we had a breakthrough in that he settled him off to sleep on his own. I took him up at 9.30pm for his bedtime feed because he looked super tired, I put him in his cot when he was still awake but he was asleep within 10 minutes!

That's 3 good nights we've had in a row now, I can't believe it! He absolutely loves his cot and I genuinely do believe he just wanted/needed the extra space!! How could something so simple not have occurred to me? Thanks to everyone who suggested it!

He had a 5.5 hour stint, woke for a feed and then had another 3.5 hour stint.

I can't describe how wonderful it feels to not have to listen to his screaming at night anymore, he's like a totally different baby!!

That sounds brilliant!! Keep doing that if it works. One night feed is managable :)

I'm happy with one

In this heat he needs it - when he wakes up he feeds for 10 minutes on each side, he's gulping it down so must be really thirsty!

I visited a friend of mine yesterday who has an 11 month old and said that overnight, in the period of 12 hours (8-8) she feeds him 7-8 times She knows it's behavioural with him and a pattern she just can't break.

Makes one night feed sound a dream doesn't it :o

cote - see this from the AAP - there really are different definitions of sttn! www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/Infant-Sleep-Patterns-Throughout-the-First-Year.aspx

Yes my daughter was like your friend's baby until I sleep trained her. Then she was better but she is still easily disturbed. Hunger and sleep associations cause a lot of waking when they are babies, then it's developments/teething/seperation anxiety/nightmares/toileting/growing pains/school issues etc). I think it's a mistake to think that you just need to get them sleeping through the night and then that's it, good sleep from then on.

I need to introduce you to my DH tarka - so you can explain that to him, because it's definitely what he thinks

It was going better, but last night and now tonight have just been more grizzling, crying and screaming.

My DH has taken him downstairs for 10 minutes because my head might just explode.

DS is absolutely shattered, he looks exhausted but he just won't go to sleep

I read the first 2 pages of the thread, but not all.
I would not go for controlled crying. I would try to structure his daytime sleeping and feeding so that he goes to bed tired and not hungry, which means he will be more able to sleep. If you work on this, you should not need to do controlled crying, which really is a bit of a last resort, for parents with long term sleeping difficulties.
If you get into some kind of structure (see things like Baby Whisperer or Gina Ford) things will improve at night.

To those who are keen for babies of 4 months to lead what happens, the OP is not happy with what is happening and wants to take action, rather than let baby totally set the pace. It is fine if she wants to do this. I just don't think controlled crying is the place to start with a baby of this age. It is still very possible to establish a good routine and better settling and length of sleep will come.

I agree with chocolate. I'm pretty confident it's an overtired issue rather than a sleep association issue

Agree with the two posters above, an overtired baby is a difficult to settle to sleep baby.