Hi,
My dd is 18 weeks old and having real trouble sleeping. I know about the 4 month sleep regression but also want to check that there is nothing else going on.
She has always been a bad sleeper e.g never self settled, sometimes requires feeding and then bouncing on exercise ball to sleep, all naps on me or in sling.
We had a few glorious weeks around 3 months where she fed to sleep from 5pm and was in her cot by 6.15 - 6.30 and slept for 3-7 hours for a feed, then another 3 hours, then another 2 or 3 hours and waking around 6.30 for the day.
However, recently (last 3.5 weeks) she is taking hours to get to sleep - feeding and rocking from 5 or 6 pm until 8 or 9 pm, then sleeping for 1-2 hours before waking for a feed then waking every 30 mins to 1 hour throughout the night. Sometimes she feeds back to sleep, but often she isn't hungry And I end up bouncing her on the exercise ball for hours and not getting any sleep!
When she wakes and isn't hungry, she starts crying in her sleep, which makes me think something is causing her pain/ discomfort.
I've tried dosing her up with calpol at the beginning of the night, given up dairy, started the bedtime routine later/ earlier, forced more naps and fewer naps throughout the day/ fed more during the day. But nothing has made any difference.
During this bad spell, she has twice slept for 7 hour chunks but I didn't do anything different on those days so I don't know how to encourage her to sleep for longer.
Dh bounces her back to sleep sometimes in the night and gets up with her at 5 or 6 every day so I can get a few hours of sleep before he goes to work.
Please give me suggestions!