4 month old sleep schedule

[Botot]

Hi all, I'm new to this and hope someone might be able to help!

I'm a first time mum and baby is now 4 months old. I have been trying and failing to get her on some sort of schedule for a few weeks but I'm finding the advice so conflicting!!!! In general it seems that all the books say they need about 14 hours sleep a day but if you look at sample baby schedules they seem to show baby sleeping 7pm-7am plus about 4.5 hours of naps a day which would mean almost 17hrs of sleep?!

The other point I'm confused about is that it says to start stretching out feeds to 4 hours apart but if that's the case and she wakes at 7am and goes to bed at 7pm it means only being able to fit 4 or 5 feeds in (if hoping they sleep through eventually) which if she has 6oz at a time only means she will have 30oz a day which isn't enough for a 14lbs baby?! So confused!!!!!! Any help or advice would be great!!!

Finally, what do you all do about routine? Do you ever leave the house as it seems impossible for me at the moment as if she doesn't nap properly she just screams for 2 hours by the evening do doesn't seem worth it but feeling a bit trapped :-( X

Hi Botot

I know how you feel! I felt like I didn't want to leave the house as if my daughter had a meltdown I wouldn't know if it was hunger or tiredness so putting her in a routine was important for my own sanity.

My daughter is 4 months next week and she feeds every 4 hours (starting at 7am). She then goes to sleep at 7:30 - 7 (sometimes wakes up earlier but usually goes back to sleep, other times she just plays by herself, occasionally may need to pick her up earlier).

She naps for a maximum of 4 hours during the day (but usually it's closer to 3 1/2).

With regards to feeds, her 11am and last feed of the night are bigger feeds. the evening feed I split it - so feed her half, bathe and then finish the second half.

So leaving the house - I try to avoid the middle of the day cause that is ideally her long nap (2 1/2 hours) so prefer her being in her cot, but the other naps don't mind if that is in her buggy.

Hope that helps.

Following! Sorry I can't help - I'm a month behind you and have all these questions too!

Watching with interest, my fella only sleeps for 3 short naps during the day - about 30 min each and lately is fighting sleep at night!

DS is 4 months too, and I'm interested in others' experiences.

He's bf and fed on demand which is basically about every 3 hours.

We have no real routine except in the mornings, when he feeds at about 7.30, sits in his bouncy chair while I have a shower and tidy up, and then is in the sling (asleep) from about 8.30 for an hour and a half while I walk the dog. His bath is after that, as he is hot after the walk.

When he looks tired, usually having been awake for 1.5 hours, I put him in bed awake, swaddled, with a soother and walk away. He's used to this now and will even sleep on other people's sofas etc depending on where we are. He only naps for about half an hour at a time.

I never worry about when I leave the house as it doesn't seem to matter. I suppose I try to have him recently fed as it gives me most time before I need to feed him again, but it's easy with bf to feed anywhere. The other day I was in a clothes shop and realised he was hungry, so I picked up a random garment, went to the fitting room and fed him there.

If he needs a nap when we're out, he'll sleep pretty well in the buggy or failing that I stick him in the sling.

He tends to not want a nap in the evenings and is horribly bright-eyed from about 6 to 9 or (aaargh!) 10pm, at which point he falls asleep and wakes usually just once in the night for a feed.

That all sounds very random and unscheduled!

DH had him last week as I was working, and kept a record of things. He took a bottle about every 3 hours and the amounts were so variable, from 50 to 150ml.

DS is 6 months and sleeps 8-5 (wakes up for bottle) then again until 7ish. He has 4 or 5 bottles a day (5 ounce) and doesn't sleep longer than 2 hours. 30oz a day is a lot.

As long as your baby is not distressed and gaining weight then everything fine don't worry

Thanks perpetualsummer! Does your daughter sleep through the night 7.30-7? The dream!!! Do you mind me asking how much you give at each feed? I'm just struggling as my lo won't really take more than 5/6 oz per feed so feels like we will never get through the night :-(

Thanks lozza1990 and villainousbroodmare that's really helpful. We put her to bed at 6 so maybe she is going down too early...

I aim to give 200ml at 7, 230ml at 11, 180 at 3 and then 240 for her split feed. This is my aim as she has taken these amounts before (actually there have been days where she's taken 100ml more than those figures above, but once I dropped the evening feed I couldn't really manage to get her to take more during the day).

However this morning she only took 150ml. And on Monday she only took about 650ml (but she woke up on Tuesday with a runny nose) so that explained it.

Sorry - for using ml instead of ounces - Australian education!

Thank you!!

I should say my daughter is the most distracted / slowest feeder though!!

It's never as easy as the books make out, is it?!
I think you'll find your own schedule in time that works. My DD is five months and while I can't say that we are on a schedule exactly, things are starting to settle down, mainly because she is not fighting naps as much. I try to make sure she gets some of her naps in the cot, otherwise we are out and about. As long as she sleeps regularly throughout the day then that's ok. Her total day sleep never normally amounts to more than 2 hours though as she's still a cat napper (hoping that will change with time).
I bf and there is no schedule to that at all! Whenever she wants and nearly always before a nap. I probably feed every two hours in the day.
I know routine is recommended and some people love/ need it but flexibility works for me. At least for now anyway...

DS is nearly 4 months and we aren't on a schedule or routine. But I do try to keep an eye on the clock and position him somewhere that makes sleep easy, after a couple of hours of being awake. For us this could be pram, car, or bouncy chair. He's EBF so feeds are closer together than 4 hours, on demand which in reality works out at about every 2 hours during the day. If your LO is only taking small amounts at each feed I'd say you have to go with more frequent feedings, but of course be led by your baby and the weight gain.

We do have a bath and bed "routine" in as much as we start at the same time and do the same things in the same order, but he takes as long as he takes to get to sleep properly. And he sometimes sleeps through the night and sometimes wakes up 1, 2 or 3 times for anything from 15 minutes to 1.5 hours . So basically, no real schedule but he seems happy enough.

At this stage your LO is probably still going through the 4th leap, and I read something on the baby sleep site that said not to bother trying to instill routine when they are going through a leap. So after this is over we might try to be a bit more rigid.

As to leaving the house, yes I go out every single day at least once. But again I try to time it so that either he needs a sleep, if it's a longish car journey or walk, or just slept and fed if it's a short trip. If I know I need to be anywhere at a specific time I work backwards. So if I need to leave at 1pm for a 30 minute drive, I would try to swing it so that he's slept around 11-11.30 and has been fed not long before I go out.