Advice needed (?FateDestiny) about managing 4 month sleep regression and a toddler

[Lilipot15]

I have read another recent thread on the 4 month sleep regression. My situation is a bit different as I also have a 19 month old.
DD1 fortunately now sleeps well but I think part of my anxiety is that a) she will be woken and then she can be difficult to settle and b) we are heading down the route of her earlier sleeping stuff.

I appreciate we are are very lucky to have one sleeping child and also know these things are normal and eventually pass but
tips needed please!

Baby won't take a dummy despite my efforts of sitting there tapping it, trying different dummies.
Baby seems to be getting overtired to the point that she finds it really difficult to settle.
She will tend to settle on a walk in her pram, but I am struggling to do this as often as needed with a reluctant toddler who will scream, shout, kick if not wanting to be out. She can't walk too far either.
Not really got enough room in house to have pram in here to push to sleep.

Tried bouncy chair, sleepyhead, soothing music.
Will feed to sleep at times (BF) but then wakes as soon as put down.

I am getting as much help as I can but it's getting tricky.

I can see baby is going through a developmental stage - lovely and smily, chatty, great head control, playing with toys. But when she is tired, oh man!! Poor thing is screaming, pulling off the boob etc....

At this point, should I be aiming to get a certain number of naps in? I have just been going with the flow until now and she has tended to nap when we're out and about but it's gone pear shaped this week.

She still feeds several times a night (not sure how many as I cosleep after her first few hours of sleep in a bedside crib) which is fine but now she is wriggling and giggling!!

Any advice welcome. I know part of it is just to accept it but my main worry is that I have a baby who is getting overtired and needs help to sleep and a toddler who is well, a toddler!!

Is there definitely no way you could push the pram in the house. Ours was totally in the way for the few months we had to use it for DC2's naps, but I'm not sure what I would have done otherwise. If you make it into a routine with sleeping bag etc you may get to the stage where you just have to jiggle the handle instead of doing up and down pushing.

I think I may have to somehow bring the pram in. Any ideas of a routine?

Anyone else? Sorry the first post is so long.

I only have a baby, do I can't help with the toddler bit, but DS is a very grumpy chappy without sleep. He's also a naturally tired boy and so needs his naps.

At that age I was a massive clock watcher and put him down as soon as he had been awake for 2 hours. You may like to try 1.5 hours initially and see how you go. I used to work hard at this for a week and then things usually fall into place (with each passing phase...!)

I am quite a 'gentle' parent, but I'm very strict with naps and seem to have adopted the approach that once he's down for his nap he doesn't come downstairs until he has slept!

I appreciate that all of this will be a lot harder with a toddler, but what it will hopefully do is allow you some quality time with him once baby is asleep!

Thanks - I had in mind to try something like that but wasn't sure how long to leave between naps. Sounds ridiculous that I don't know as I've done it before but when I think about how DD1 was as a baby, I think she was often overtired.
I guess the fact that DD2 will sleep so quickly in car or pram suggests she is actually tired!! It can just be such a rigmarole getting a toddler out as well, and obviously not possible to walk outside or drive when toddler in her nice long post-lunch nap.

Ps and I shall also have to start a timer on my phone to help me remember wake times etc, as with two tinies, before I know it two hours have passed!

I think once you get into the gist of it, it will be a lot easier and will actually help you to plan things as you'll know when you can go for a drive/walk as baby is due a sleep, rather than walking aimlessly hoping that you've hit the magic time!!

A word of warning though, if you are anything like me, you can possibly turn into a clock psycho, and get really stressed is baby isn't asleep by the designated time. I don't know how to not stress, but just so you know, you are not alone!!!

19 month old and 4 month old - so 15 month age gap? Ah I remember those days wearily. There are 14 months between my eldest two (now 10y and 11y). It was damn hard work - I feel for you.

Regarding the baby's daytime sleep - with my two close in age DC2 was taught from newborn to sleep through everything. No quiet dark room for his sleep - under an overhead light (deliberately switched on), near TV in living room with toddler whirlwind all around. This ensured DC2 was definitely not a light sleeper, which helped everything.

I was breastfeeding too at the time. I think cracking feeding is key to sleep in the first 3-4 months. Feed more than you expect to. More than you think you need to. Basically at every whimper, feed.

Your living room floor is your friend. As is the bouncy chair and dummy (both worth persevering with). Sitting on the floor when feeding means you can still interact with toddler. Likewise when dozing baby is put into bouncy chair on floor, you can bounce into oblivion while sitting on floor (reinserting dummy as needed) while still interacting with toddler.

Having bouncy chair, baby changing stuff and spare baby clothes all in your living room means that you are not faffing here there and everywhere with baby.

Routine - I like EASY. It's more of a repeated cyclic structure to your day, rather than strict timings. It means awake time is limited with regular sleep throughout the day.

E - Eat (full feed starts the cycle)
A - Awake (ideally 60 minutes, or when tired signs start if sooner)
S - Sleep (try to keep baby asleep for 30-45 minutes. Leave to wake naturally)
Y - You time (or indeed toddler time)

The idea is that you repeat the same structure through the day, which means regular feeds and sleeps.

Thank you FATE - I knew you would give good advice, hadn't quite appreciated you had the same age gap!

How do you recommend I persevere with dummy if she won't take it at this age? I've been through lots of different types, sat tapping it, sat holding it in....DD1 was great with a dummy, which even now, attached to her dummy bunny is a great sleep association and she happily puts them back in the cot ready for the next bedtime.

I think I am perhaps so tired my ability to sit and bounce the chair, put the baby down at the right time is not so good. I seem to end up with her being overtired and then I think harder to get to sleep - would this be right?

DH got her to sleep by rocking her car seat on the floor the other day when we were out, so it can be done.

Anyway, DD2 is asleep so I am off to bed!

And I shall try to remember the EASY routine, more often EAST (t for toddler as you said).

19 months is still a baby really, just a big baby. Lots of parents cope with a baby and toddler. Coping with a big baby and a little baby takes a special kind of patience.

I just kept going with the dummy. It was my youngest (DC4 is 12 months old) who didn't naturally take to the dummy. She did in the end. She accepted the dummy at the same time we cracked bottles (she also wouldn't accept a bottle of expressed milk). Both necessary things IMO so kept on with the daily perseverance until she got it.

You are right that once baby gets to be over-tired, then getting her to sleep is harder. Hence limiting awake time. Up to 3 months I wouldn't expect much more than 30 minutes awake between sleeps, and you are not far out of that newborn phase. So maybe tomorrow try really short awake times and see if baby goes to sleep better.

Pay more attention to awake time than asleep time. Doesn't matter if it's a short nap (but I would always try to extend naps by bouncing back to sleep in the bouncy chair), as long as there isn't too long until the next nap.

I have a 20 month gap between mine - baby is 14 weeks. Is hard isn't it?!
We do naps in the sling as not cracked the putting down for naps business yet!
Agree with the awake time - max 2 hrs for little one, more often 1.5hrs.
Thank goodness the toddler naps in the day is all I can say!

Thanks. We had a better evening as she managed to have a teatime nap (in the pram) but nights feel like we're back to newborn behaviour! I am planning to get through those by going to bed as early as possible and cosleeping if needed.
If I can crack the daytime sleeping and avoid an overtired screaming baby, my own stress levels will go down!

And FATE - my toddler must have read your post, she was busy trying to give the baby a dummy this morning