No napping, more waking at night and generally a little monkey!

[Tatyana81]

So ladies (and possibly gentlemen) I have a 16 week old who was as far as new babies are concerned, a dream baby - slept and ate extremely well. There I was all complacent and content and then boom! We went on holiday and napping went out the window first which resulted in cranky baby and stressed mum and dad. Now we are home and all this week I have tried to reinstate his three daily naps but oh no, the little monkey doesn't want to.

Not sure if this has then resulted in worse nights or a coincidence but now he is waking up a few times per night instead of his usual one.

On top of this, when he wakes he has started to cry out immediately as if he has been abandoned for hours. He didn't do this from newborn until 15 weeks or so. He also wont settle for his naps any longer and going to bed at night only when falling asleep at the breast.

This week I calculated his mls per day to see if he was justified in his wakings and night hunger and he only takes about 600 -700 mls a day which is pretty low. I have tried feeding him more regularly and then further apart to no avail. To add another dynamic, he has suspected cows milk allergy so the formula we have is prescription so probably tastes funny so now I give him the formula and then breast feed after once he has had enough of the bottle - usually 60 mls or so.

Am I doing something wrong? At times it feels so difficult to deal with esp when tired if he's been up from 2.40 and then doesn't really settle for any length of time thereafter.

Any advice welcome all. We have an allergy test on Wednesday so hoping they rule that out and we can start to introduce regular formula as well as breast whilst I phase it out.

xx

I think your holiday is a red herring in all of this. Somewhere around 16 weeks (4 months) is a massive and very significant developmental phase.

As a result of baby learning lots of new things, she needs significantly more calories as a result. My DDs milk intake went up by 25% quite suddenly at 4 months. many babies prefer more frequent feeds rather than bigger amounts per feed. So I would aim for feeding more frequently through the daytime (2 hourly at first?) to get one or two extra bottles in per day.

Better feeding often makes sleep easier. But you have a second issue adding to your problems here.

During the newborn phase - first 3 months or so - babies are very easy to settle to sleep (comparatively). They just need a full tummy and mostly they go to sleep. This all changes as babies get older, at which point they start needing sleep comforters or sleep triggers.

By far the easiest sleep trigger to allow for independent sleeping is a dummy. But you could also rock to sleep, bounce to sleep, walk in pram or carseat, pat and shush to sleep, feed to sleep, let baby suck your finger.

Babies cannot self-settle like an adult (lie down, close eyes, sleep) and you have just reached the age where you need to introduce your baby to a sleep trigger for getting to sleep.

As I said, the holiday is a red herring. You just happen to be at the 4 month sleep regression. You have to change things and do things differently now baby is getting older.