Early Sleep Regression?

[HelenF35]

Ds used to sleep through from 11pm till 6/7am. Since 10 weeks this has stopped and he is now waking every 2 hours or so. Could this be the 4 month sleep regression early? He is now 13 weeks but is hitting developmental milestones early. He rolled front to back at 10 weeks and is now rolling back to front. How long is this likely to last and is there anything we can do to help. We've been trying to introduce a sleep schedule but he is terrible at napping during the day and I can't get him to nap for more than 15 mins unless he is in the sling. He used to self settle but won't do it anymore, he just screams so I have had to feed him to sleep. If we put. Him to bed at 7 he will only sleep 15/20 mins max. Then can't get him back down till at least 10. So frustrating!

Anyone?

Hm... reading your post my initial thoughts are that the frequent night wakings are caused by overtiredness. You say ds doesn't sleep much during the day. How much sleep would you say he has? More importantly how much awake time is he having between naps?

At 13 weeks mine were all short nappers (used a sling for day naps) and could only handle around 1 hr of awake time. So I increased frequency of naps to reduce overtiredness (around 4 to 5). An earlier bedtime can also help (night sleep more restorative than day sleep). If you are struggling to get ds down for naps i wonder if you are leaving it too late and missing tired signs. Could you try reducing awake time to see if that makes a difference? Wouldn't worry too much about self settling at this point and give him a helping hand to sleep. Concentrate on helping him nap during the day (use the sling if that works) and watch his awake times aren't too long. Hopefully night wakings should improve as you break the cycle if overtiredness.

I would say a total of 1.5 to 2 hours nap time over 4 naps. He gets tired after 2-2.5 hours awake time. Ive tried to put him down fir the night at 7.00pm but he will only nap for a short time. I had him in the sling for 45 mins before he would nap this morning!

He was up 9 times last night between 9pm and 7am. It wasn't just hunger either as several times he fell straight asleep on me but he'd often wake as soon as I tried to put him back or 15 mins later. Tried leaving him a minute or two to see if he'd settle but to no avail.

2-2.5hrs awake time in between naps is too much for a 13 week old. I would say 1.5hrs is the max time. It's so hard to miss tired signs in young babies so i would be inclined to go by the clock. You should aim to have baby asleep by 1.5hrs from the time they first wake. You may even find you will need to shorten that awake time if the naps are really short. It may be an endless round of short naps and short awake times throughout the day until you break the OT cycle but persistence is key for a few days.

Re night sleep and bedtime totally normal that baby will wake after short nap at 7pm. Do you treat it like a night waking and settle back to sleep? You could try bringing bedtime forward a bit to make up for lack of day sleep. I know it sounds counterproductive but it really helps for overtired babies. Then treat every waking as night waking even if the first part of night sleep is short.

Assuming ds is sleeping in your room? Is there any chance you or dh may be disturbing them in night? Or outside noise? I use white noise for all of mine to block out other noise. It is so relaxing and even helps my sleep!

I have tried settling him back to sleep but he just won't go during any of his night waking a. He used to settle himself no problem so it's very frustrating. He must be exhausted today as been asleep for about an hour and a half already today.

He is in our room in a crib next to the bed but only wants to go to sleep on me. There is no noise from outside or is that is waking him. He just seems very unsettled.

My 16 week old went to pot at about 10 weeks tho never slept anywhere near as long as your DS but he did manage 6 hrs once. We used to have about 2 wake ups per night which was fine.
Then he went to waking 5-6 times a night and having different spells every few days - so only wanting boob then next night just wanting to be rocked. He hasn't been putting on weight tho due to excessive vomming and has bad bum wind at nigjt so we're investigating potential cows milk allergy. Even so I don't think whatever is up with him is the entire reason for such frequent waking I think they just have a funny spell around this age with all the development they are doing...
Not v helpful but you aren't alone. ..