Another sleep regression crisis

[gladders83]

Hi everyone, first-time dad to a 4-month old girl here. I wish my wife and I had been warned that sleep regression exists - we had no idea, and were completely unprepared!

My little girl started her regression in the first days of December '16 and there's no end in sight. Rather than the typical sleeping in two-hour spats, she's moved into a worse stage.

Currently, she simply refuses to nap during the daytime unless held. If held, she can sleep on you for upwards of an hour at a time. But the moment you put her down, guaranteed, she wakes up, no matter how deeply sleeping and no matter how frequently we persist in it.

She does manage to go to sleep for bedtime at about 8.30-9 every night following a bath, feed and stories (although not without an almighty fight beforehand), and that sleep usually lasts until about 1am. Then she wakes and my wife feeds, but by about 2.30am she wakes me up to take over.

So take over I do. I hold her on my left shoulder, as it's the only part of me that she can relax on, apparently - right shoulder and other positions just cause frenetic squirming, to the point at which I now have RSI in my left elbow from holding it in the same position for hours on end.

I hold her, and she dozes on my shoulder - ever so lightly - so that whenever I feel she may have finally gone back into deep sleep, TWITCH, no, she's still awake, but just lightly dozing.

That light dozing goes on for hours. She seems to never return to a deep sleep, so I end up staying awake for that whole time.

Tonight, my wife tried to give her a top up at 3.30am, and our baby proceeded to doze and stop nursing. We decided to change her nappy to wake her up, and she wets herself the second I remove the nappy, requiring a complete clothes change, which woke her up. Back on the boob, she refuses to feed.

So my wife needs to pump and I take baby into the living room to give her some space and I brace myself for another few hours of being awake. Baby is now fully awake and refusing to go down, and my wife is going to try co-sleeping, which basically means baby sleeps but my wife doesn't.

I get the assurances that this will pass, but it's absolutely exasperating. It's getting to the point where I entertain the idea of simply letting her wake up by leaving her alone so I can at least get some company, but I know that won't help at all. My wife is taking the worst brunt as she has to nurse, but while I can manage on little sleep my wife is super-dependent on decent sleep.

Help.

Op I know how hard I this. We are just coming through this now he seems to be learning to love through sleep cycles but I feel the best way to help them is to teach them that sleep is a secure state. For them to sleep soundly and be comforted, if that she by being held so be it. Thy wake up weee they fell asleep and there is no fear ir confusion. If she wants to held because she needs the comfort then try to find a way to make it work. We got through the last two months on two hours sleep at a time. We swapped all night. He then started settling better and is now sleeping in his cot soundlynjust waking to feed and going back down. I thought it would never happen and suddenly is just does. Was the same with my first.

When your wife feeds her to sleep can she surround herself with firm pillows so she isn't comfortable and baby is safely Resting . On her arms and unable to move around and then f can at least safely close her eyes and when she needs to swap you then take over for a while.

If your baby needs holding. In the day then get a carrier. I use one with mine and he sleeps for ages in it. Here are many different kinds I recommend joking a Facebook group called slings and things for advice.
Leave housework etc and just et her to sleep on you in the day. Sot down and let her sleep. The Bette treated she is in the day th better she will sleep at night.
Make it easy. Do whatever you need to get her to sleep and the rest will follow. If she's having her meds and off milk then make the rest easy and just hold her for now. You will likely find she is more settled if she's knows that you are close and not constantly trying different gongs to settle her. It will not make her clingy, it generally makes babies more secure because they learnt tha thou are there and won't disappear randomly.

She hasn't been formally diagnosed - our GP postulated it as a possible explanation. At least, that's how my wife explained it to me.

I guess I will take advice and not push her into sleep training for now then. I'm taking 3 months off for parental leave myself in early March as a stay-at-home dad. I'll see about chamomile oil - that could work.

Baby is fed plenty. Oh yes. My wife feeds on demand and lets her have her fill.

We'll persevere in avoiding dairy and offering the medicine for a few more weeks.

One more thing - we put her in a sling all the time during the day. My wife is practically grafted into one. She does the chores with baby in it and walks around with it all the time. The past few weeks we have been travelling a lot due to househunting and baby is nearly always in the sling. She still sleeps about an hour, all told, all day? We encourage her to sleep as much as we can, and she just isn't interested, or at least simply is slow in getting tired.

She can have a ten minute nap then snap herself awake - no input from us - and then be bright and alert for several more hours. It's pretty remarkable.

She should be getting 5 to mg per kg per day of zantac. She might be on the lowest dose and need more. Please go back or ring paediatrcian for a review.

(I am not a doctor, this is not a medical opinion.)

The throu he is at four months babies are going through a huge developmental leap. Look up the wonder weeks app. She is getting whole new input from the world so she will find it very hard to switch off. She may appear alert and awake etc but given the right conditions she would probably sleep. Over tiredness will then cause massive upset in he night time. Sounds counter intuitive but it's true. The more tired thtey are the worse they sleep. If she is too excited in the sling, maybe try one if you stay in. Home (I know that can be very hard too) to make sure she gets a quiet, dark space with white noise and a feed or cuddle to sleep after maybe 90 minutes awake etc. She may then start to get more routine of sleeping. Benn once she's used to it she may Ben better at napping whilst in a stimulating environment.

For example my 7 minute th old today was awake at 5:50. He then napped only twenty minutes thrhis morning instead of usually 90 due to teething. We've brought toddler to soft play and baby was ready for sleep on arrival. But he fought it for another 90 minutes and finally slept in the sling. There was too many new things to see and explore and once every he had done that he slept in te sling. I will make sure he gets a solid afternoon nap today a time home in bed. The more you can do that then maybe that will be better for your baby girl.

gladders83

Could your wife just park herself on the sofa for the day and do nothing but watch tv?

You bring her meals and cups of tea and everything else she needs. All she need focus on is feeding and sleeping and nothing else.

To break your baby's over tiredness cycle you will need to relentlessly focus on getting baby to sleep as much as possible. And be utterly and completely relentless and unceasing in it.

1 hours daytime sleep, in 10 minute bursts sometimes, really is nowhere near what a 4 months old needs.

No one should be managing on 2 hours sleep per day. No one would cope. The way to cope is to get baby sleeping and the way to get baby sleeping is to make sleep easy for the baby.

Just lying baby down and expecting that baby will sleep is making sleep very, very, very hard for baby to sleep. The opposite to what you want. It will get you less sleep, not more.

How are you doing with the dummy? You may need to hold it in her mouth given the extent of her distress.

Have you tried a bouncy chair?

Have you had a day limiting awake time in the day? Literally just 30-45 minutes from waking to be back to sleep. If it takes 30 minutes to get her to sleep then... well, that's why your wife gets te sofa day. Just breastfeed, insert dummy, leave baby there. Baby wakes, breastfeed immediately, dummy back in, don't move. Feed sleep feed sleep fed sleep non stop from 7am to 11pm when she goes to bed.

Timetogrowup2016 - try to read the detail of what is actually written rather than scan reading, projecting and sniping at me about what you incorrectly assume I am saying. We have been here before....

We do that. She tends to get sleepy about 10am and either me on weekends or my wife on weekdays sits on our bouncy exercise ball to rock her to sleep, offering food if she wants it.

We offer the dummy and she sometimes takes it if she's really tired, but it is useless offering it to her if she's determined to stay awake. I've offered her the dummy when she's just woken, and she spits it out. Yes, we try to hold it in there, but she quickly gets distressed.

The 'put her down and leave her to it' is not what we normally do - it's part of the pick-up/put-down method, which we'll abandon given people's reactions here. Normally we hold her and offer food to get her to sleep. It's the keeping her asleep that's the challenge, apart from actually getting her to sleep during the day!

My wife has tried days where she just stays indoors and focusses on getting baby to calm and sleep, but it doesn't seem to make a difference beyond depressing my wife who hates wasting days indoors. Yes, yes, I know, that's early parenthood, but it doesn't stop her feeling that way.

Lots of people enjoy getting out the house, that's fine. It's just as you are learning, that can be really hard work for some babies.

If your wife can fit a pushchsir walk into her day and baby is happy - that's fantastic. Realky good for both of them.

What I meant that she needn't make it a chore. If baby screams or your wife is so knackered she just doesn't want to - that's fine too.

There is a cultural thing in the UK, exasperated by maternity leave deadlines, whereby new mums feel they should be doing stuff. And if they aren't doing stuff then they are "wasting" their days.

It's definitely a cultural thing. In other countries and in previous times when mums were under less of this kind of pressure, new parents focused only on their new baby.

Now is the time your wife (more your wife than you, since she is breastfeeding) can be totally selfish. Her life can be soly about meeting the baby's needs and then she can selfishly assume that all other aspects of life should focus around what she wants to do. If tgat me and going shopping with baby, fine. Or a walk or a drive to the coast, great.

Or she can just decide to step off the treadmill of expectations and just rest. Only rest. Do nothing but resting and eating.

Be wary of believing the "bright and alert" thing. As I said, we believed it with our first. It was a trap!

Absolutely true annarose. "Bright and alert" can mean overtired and wired. It can also be used for parents why power through over tiredness - ie by constantly keeping baby occupied and busy in order to stop baby crying.

I generally work on the assumption that awake time = floor time for a baby. So that baby can be learning all those gross motor skills while I drink a hot cup of tea in my much valued child-free time. If baby so much a grumbles when being left to play under the play gym, that means it's sleep time. Awake/happy time should not any effort or cajoling.

I found this really helpful in the early days just to gauge what naps ds should be having and roughly when (by when I mean how spaced apart), they should be napping. Apologies if you've already seen this, I had no clue when I first had mine!

Brigg and alert - absolutely. The first stage of my seven month olds tired cue is the widest eyes you've ever seen. Whenever we are out and say "he's ready to sleep" we get endless comments of "those don't look like tired eyes to Me" etc etc.

From your earlier post you said she'll sleep in the day for ten minutes but wake if you move etc but now you say your wife has had days where she's focussed solely on her sleeping and does she still wake after ten minutes? If your wife just fed her and stayed sitting with her would she sleep longer?

I think consistency is key. Find a way that seems to work best, most likely breastfeeding and rocking in a chair, maybe white noise or a blanket or bum patting or whatever and just go with it. Ours likes shushing if he's a little too far gone and bum patting if he needs settling in bed. Otherwise now for naps it's a quick cuddle then into bed -that's progressed from being rocke duntil a dead weight then slowly manoeuvred into bed. Try and keep it the same, even though she is little they do learn cues and love routine. Have you tried a baby massage at all? Just pick a routine that works for you and repeat repeat repeat and hopefully over time (and it will take time no matter what you do, sorry) she will get there and you'll get sleep.
So daytime maybe breastfeed and just cuddle for now to get her to stay asleep as long as you can and as often as possible. Then bedtime try bath(unless To stimulating as it is for some babies), massage, white noise breastfeed and cuddles then co sleep or swap between you.

It's still early days so don't worry about schedule in terms of times etc but doing things in he same order each time to cue that it's sleep time.

At four months we were still all over with maps but he, like his older brother, would always scream at six o clock and want bath and bed guaranteed. His brother is still the same now and no matter where we are or what we are doing, come soxno clock they know it!! We have no evening commitments for at least the first year and had people saying "oh just keep them
Up". Hmm. No. Not worth the sleepless night.

Keep going, make it as easy as you can and if you do feel there is a medical issue then push it. We did have to go to max dose for ranitidine before it really helped and at six months he outgrew the silent reflux.

Still here. Had 1 hour of sleep before baby woke and won't settle unless on my shoulder. She's five months now. Getting emotional. Will this ever end?

Have you been back to the gp? Is the reflux better? Is your wife still off cows milk? It will, yes, but it's a rough time all round. Take it in turns and sleep on shift. Is there a family member or good friend who you could ask to come and help out overnight to let you get a full nights slepp and bring her to your wife for feeding?

The doctor cancelled the dairy-ban on my wife, as it was making no difference.

We live in central London and our nearest family members are 40 miles away - and getting through London is very time-consuming. So we're usually on our own.

It's coming to the point now that we're starting to snap at each other especially on nights like last night where baby sleeps for an hour. I ended up losing my mind at 3am because she wouldn't stop crying (from fighting sleep).

Can I just say that FateDestiny has said similar things in the past on this forum and I agree with her completely. I read her responses on previous threads and they've helped me massively. I've started to think about my baby's day in terms of activities and feeds balanced out with good long naps. He sleeps really well now and I feel normal again. I'm very aware now of overtiredness and overstimulation as these lead to fussiness and poor quality sleep; I've learned his cues now and can spot tiredness a mile away. It's the sign to stop everything and sleep.

Here's this morning as an example. He woke up at 08:30 so I fed him. He's bottle fed so I had to carry him through to the kitchen and put him down while I made his bottle, talking to him all the while. Then I changed his bum and babygrow, put him on a mat and 'chatted' to him for about ten minutes (he's just discovered his voice and loves shouting at me when he's in a good mood). Then I put him in his jumperoo. I know the jumperoo exhausts him because of all the toys/colours/lights/sounds and because he has to balance himself a bit in the harness, so I kept a close eye on him. After about ten mins he made a fractious noise and his little head fell forward. Straight away I picked him up, wrapped him in a blanket and gave him his dummy. He wriggled and spat it out a few times but he's now been sleeping in my arms for an hour and a half.

That was a lot of detail, but I've found it useful to remember that every little thing you do tires them out. Even changing nappies etc. contributes to that and can be enough to tip him into overtiredness if I don't time it right. I've also noticed that new faces and surroundings tire him out more quickly - yesterday I went to Ikea with my friend and he slept loads during and after. Sometimes I even show him photos of people on my phone as an activity, or we look at ourselves in a mirror. His brain working gets him tired as well as physical stuff. His jumperoo does both so he can't use it for long.

You said you noticed your DD was tired so gave her a bath and a story - that would be way too much for DS. I know because I was forced to give him a bath two days ago when he was already tired and he wouldn't settle for ages and he cried, which he rarely does.

Our whole day is split into loose segments consisting of feed, followed by a burst of activity, then sleep. The length of the latter two depends on what the activities are - sitting him in his bouncy chair while I clean, for example, doesn't use much energy as he's used to it so he's more likely to get bored than tired. If he won't sleep in my arms (he refuses his cot during the day so I've accepted this, but it's quite nice to be honest. I'm going to try out a Sleepyhead too) I put him in his pram and go for a walk. I never wake him up from naps - our whole day is structured around them.

At night our routine is dictated by how tired he is. He has maybe three or four baths per week only for this reason. I put him in his cot when he's fed and happy - tired enough to yawn but awake enough to smile. I sit on the bed where he can see me, replacing his dummy when he needs it and staying very quiet and sometimes stroking his face if he's very tired, until he nods off.

There's a sweet spot before they get overtired. I always watch for that.

I hope I don't sound like a smug twat. I know nothing about babies and fuck up regularly. But this is one area I feel is working (for now - fingers crossed) so maybe it'll help you too.

She's still very tiny to be "taught" anything. Co-sleep till she's through this phase, worked for me going through the exact same thing

We can't co-sleep. All three of us cannot sleep in that state.

Fartniss, I'll see if we can move her bath. My wife's the one who is on leave so I don't know if she is able to schedule it anywhere.

Baby's tiredness tell seems to be rubbing her eyes and yawning - or is that too late? At the weekend I tried holding her with a dummy when I noticed that but it didn't work. She seems to expect to be fed.

Maybe that is too late. It's taken a long time to learn my DS's cues and even now I sometimes miss them (or ignore them I need to shower at some point ffs!) but generally when he's eaten he's awake and smiley, then gradually he'll smile less and get a bit clingy (e.g if I've put him in his playgym he'll play quietly while I clean - until he's tired, then he'll shout and fuss when I'm out of sight), then he'll make fussy noises (not his usual nice cooing noises - more like when he's got trapped wind?) and his head will flop a bit, like when I lift him he'll lean on my chest. He'll also start yawning. If that carries on he'll get more and more fussy and agitated. Eventually he'lll cry. The more stressed he is, the more soothing he'll need.

I'm replying now because he's napping in my arms again. He fussed slightly because I left him too long as I was sterilizing bottles but it took about five mins with the dummy and a bit of rocking. He was awake for about an hour and fed straight after his last nap. In between, he took medicine, played in his jumperoo while I sang embarrassingly as I cleaned the kitchen, got his nappy changed and we looked in the mirror for about a minute. He talked a lot.

We don't have a routine - it's more like a flexible sequence if you see what I mean?

My friend's mum helped with this when she said to me that being tired must be quite a frightening thing if you don't know what's happening. I'll know nothing about the science of babies but it makes sense - tiredness freaks them out, the more tired they are the more freaked out, their stress hormones rise and they can't settle etc.

Holding a dummy in her mouth might scare her more as it'll obstruct her breathing - was she trying to spit it out? Taking a dummy is one of DS's sleep cues.

Again, I feel the need for a disclaimer - this is my first child and I know feck all about babies. I could be talking shite.

Also I'm quite scared typing this that I'm going to jinx it and next week I'll be on here with a thread of my own!!

Baby is constantly fussy and makes squealy noises. We find it difficult to discern between squeals of joy, hunger or tiredness. They sound exactly the same.

Does she smile?

Sorry, posted too fast there. Does she react differently when you hold her when she's happy? Are her movements different? How does she behave right after a feed, or just before she finally does drop off? I'm just trying to think of times when you might notice a difference in her behavior

She smiles yes, when we interact with her. She is quite a smiley baby all the time, really.

I'll try to observe her more closely (although my wife is the one who is with her all day), but from what she's said, she is largely the same all day until she is hungry or overtired.