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.

At least she's happy!

All babies are different, and maybe I'm wrong. But as I said, it took a long time for me to learn what DS does when he starts to get tired and I was consciously looking for those things. For him, it's a really gradual change from awake to sleepy, and he'll still smile even when he's tired. He just doesn't do it as much - for example, we'll be playing and he'll be smiling loads, then he'll start to look away at times, still smiling, then he'll smile slightly less (from 100% smiles to maybe 90% of the time), then his happy noises will be interspersed with slightly more forceful sounds, like he wants something - this all continues getting worse and then literally five minutes later he's knackered. He definitely doesn't act like I'd imagine a tired person would act - if anything he gets louder and kicks about more.

If I was your wife I'd maybe take a day to really, really closely observe the baby. Note the times when she's contented and happy and what she does, then watch for
Any deterioration in her behavior and take note of what she does before finally sleeping (basically in DS his overtiredness symptoms are his early tiredness symptoms but much exaggerated, so she could work backwards from that maybe?). Also take note of what activities she's done before the tiredness kicks in. Bear in mind an hour is a long time for her to be awake, and she'll get tired a lot more quickly if she hasn't napped for long beforehand. She might get tired after even ten or twenty minutes maybe?

There's an app called Babytracker that I used a lot - it might be a quick way to track how much she's sleeping and when. You can add little notes too.

If you saw my DS you wouldn't know he was getting tired. You'd think he was fine until he wasn't, like I used to.

This is a list of what DS does, it might not be helpful for you but maybe it will:

Slightly less eye contact/smiling
Noises become slightly more insistent
Jerky movements
Clingy - won't let me out of his sight
Droopy head
Eyes start to glaze over
In the 'sweet spot' he likes a calm cuddle and will also take a dummy happily

I really hope this helps and that I'm not coming across as patronizing. This seems to have worked for us so far and you seem so exhausted that I thought if it might possibly help you I should post.

No, you're not coming on as patronising, thanks. I'll speak to my wife about it, and maybe this weekend if I get time I'll take time to observe. I think we're both terrible at noticing her cues.

Good luck

That's because you are half dead from tiredness! If ye can get through this, you will get through anything.

It's complete shit but there will come a time when it will all be forgotten about. You will get there.

My daughter has reflux and from 4 to 7 months were the worst I have ever put down, sleepwise. 3 weeks ago I had 35 minutes sleep the entire weekend. She has 3 teeth now and in the last week, things have improved a lot. You will get there.

www.babysleepsite.com/tag/overtired-baby-symptoms/ This page might help

She's even worse :(

Now she wakes every 2 hours until midnight, then every 30 minutes, and whenever I hold her to settle she squirms and twitches all the time!

Is she an insomniac???

Also, she's started to refusing any feeding apart from breast. She flat out rejects bottles.

No its just a nightmare at the moment. I'm a few weeks ahead of you and things got very bad before her teeth came up but have settled slightly now. I am still shattered but there is a bit more sleep happening. It's so hard but you will get there, you have a refluxy high needs baby but it will pass (I don't know when) but it will.

Is she on the highest dose of zantac for her weight?

The doctor recommended we take her off Zantac, as it wasn't making any difference and he was concerned we are over-medicating her. He recommended focusing on giving her Gaviscon.

That's because he is not having to live with it!
go back to the doctor, her reflux is out of control and it takes time on it, and she needs to be on the right dose for her weight.

Can you sleep on the sofa in the living room and your wife co sleep with the baby in bed? Can she breastfeed the baby while lying down? Our baby was waking every hour a little while ago, I thought I was going mad with sleep deprivation as was only getting half an hour at most at a time! Switching to co sleeping, feeding lying down (so I at least got some rest during long night feeds!) and, crucially, being really vigilant about getting her to nap in the day time really helped us.

It sounds so so tough what you're going through at the moment, I know it's not much solace but it will get better eventually.

My wife has been feeding lying down, which is fine, but our daughter does not seem to like co-sleeping, whether or not I am there - she twitches and squirms all the time. She doesn't seem in pain, just eternally sleeping light.

My wife has anxiety and is eternally stressed, and I've told her to try and sleep when the baby does (recently she has managed to get her to go down for an hour on occasion in the day), but it takes an hour for my wife to fall asleep at the best of times no matter how tired she is, so it doesn't help her recharge.

In a few weeks I am taking over on parental leave, and I know I will have to take even more slack at night so my wife can get up early to go to work. I am dreading it.

I signed up just to reply to this thread in the hope that maybe my experience could help someone. I am sympathetic as I had similar time with my baby (now almost 8 months) when he was younger. However I realise now that my actions influenced his behaviour and would do it all differently if/when I have another baby.

I had one of those "bright and alert" babies. Everyone commented on it. When he was younger and didn't really nap AT ALL, I used to read tables of expected sleep for babies of certain ages and laugh, because he wasn't getting even half the sleep that they recommended. I used to think that maybe he was just super-intelligent and curious (!) and didn't need that much sleep. Two things changed that:

1. I started topping him up with formula as he failed to put on weight at the expected rate, and dropped several centile lines. The first time I gave him a top-up, he fell asleep straight after the bottle. Out like a light. This was a revelation particularly since I had been spending ALL DAY EVERY DAY (this is no exaggeration, I used to log his feeds and there were times I would spend 14 hours a day "feeding") breastfeeding. I think in retrospect he had a poor latch and wasn't feeding efficiently. I expressed while giving formula topups to maintain/improve my milk supply and once his latch improved I was able to stop giving formula. He has now piled on the weight and has gone back to his original line in the centile chart.

1. We travelled to visit family and ended up spending hours in the car over several days. He slept the whole time, having never napped during the day before.

This is what I learned: he'd been hungry and was never satisfied after a breastfeed. And he had never had the right conditions to sleep at home, but when I provided them (by having him in a moving car) he could nap perfectly well. I too had been missing his early sleep cues.

I echo everything Fate, FartnissEverbeans and Anna said. My advice would be:

1. Are you absolutely sure she isn't hungry? Is she following a centile line ok? The amount of time spent/frequency of breastfeeding is a really poor marker for good feeding. More important is weight gain/number of wet and dirty nappies.

1. Are you absolutely sure you haven't missed very early sleep cues? I found that if I missed them and he got overtired and worked up, there was no way I'd get him to sleep. Once I started recognising them (totally agree with Fartniss's post on this) I could get him to sleep before the meltdown started. I definitely also agree that sleep begets more sleep. Sort the daytime sleep and the nighttime should improve too.

1. Do whatever it takes to make sure she naps during the day. If this means you or your wife stuck on the sofa under a sleeping baby for several hours a day, unable to do anything else, so be it. It's worth it as a means to an end.

I hope none of this comes across as patronising. I don't have it all sussed at all, but I do have a baby who naps regularly and is mostly content (he still wakes 3-6 times a night but to be honest I think this is fair enough as he's only little, and I'm happy with that). I am so much happier than I was when my baby was younger - we both are. As an aside, my baby is also medicated for reflux but personally I think this had minimal, if any, influence on what was going on with his sleep (I appreciate this won't be the case for all babies though.)

Sorry this was so long!

What MinesaLargeGin says about breastfeeding makes a lot of sense. A friend of mine a while back had an excellent latch, seemingly loads of milk and baby fed constantly - but in spite of all this was eternally fussy. As it turned out my friend had an oversupply of milk, i.e. the baby was getting loads of watery foremilk but barely getting to the fatty hindmilk, so was never satisfied.

As soon as that little one was moved onto formula he was a different baby. I don't want to suggest that you move to formula if you wife wants to breastfeed (although that might be one solution) but I'm sure there must be ways to improve such issues with breastmilk that more informed posters could share with you.

Thanks MinesaLargeGin. It's not patronising at all. :)

We are sure she's getting plenty of food as she's actually bang on the 50th centile.

I'm trying to spot proper tired cues. My stepmum looked after her today while my wife was out. She's a retired midwife and mother of 2 so should have a good understanding of this and while she got her to sleep a bit today (feeding was tough given her bottle resistance), even she has conceded our daughter is 'a challenge', which is a major comment from her, she's quite reserved!

In a few weeks I take over a main caregiver and I hope to have a grip on her routine and sleep, easier said than done. Until then I will go slowly mad...

Your step mum will know better than me I'm sure but I thought I should mention that in spite of her oversupply my friend's baby gained plenty of weight and didn't even lose any after he was born.

I hope things get better and that you enjoy your new role as main caregiver!

Hi gladders83, firstly a huge empathy hug to you and your wife. I feel your pain. We are also in the throes of a never ending 4 month sleep regression (it started at Christmas!) and while we don't have the added complexity of reflux or possible dairy intolerance, your story has so many similarities. It started off well, once we got past the first few months our little girl was sleeping great, napping well and settling in her cot around 11pm then waking up around 3am for a quick feed and back to sleep until we got up at 7am. I was so happy and felt I was already getting back to feeling normal again. Then the regression hit hard with her waking almost hourly and refusing to sleep unless held. It has been horrible and has pushed me to my limit physically and mentally.
However, it has got slightly better over the past couple of weeks and we are starting to get consistent 2-3 hour stretches at night. While you may have tried some or all of this advice already, below are things that have helped or are helping us.

• Put trying to fix the sleep issues on hold for a few days and go into survival mode. Try the weekend so you don't have work as a distraction. This means going with the flow, holding baby while she sleeps and feeding on demand, ordering takeaway and dropping the ball on everything else just like when she came home from hospital. This helped us to refocus, calm down and not feel so guilty about creating bad habits. I think our DD was picking up on our stress and it wasn't helping her relax.
• Stock up on sleep any way you can think of. This for us meant co-sleeping (see below), and taking it in turns to sleep in. My husband sometimes slept undisturbed in the spare room for a night so he was fighting fit the next day and I could have time off to recharge. You might need earplugs or sleep on the sofa for a night or even at a mate's house as you are in a flat. I would have done the same for a night but DD will not take a bottle. You will not have the energy to tackle the sleep issues unless you stock up beforehand.
• Reconsider co-sleeping and feeding while lying down. I hated it too to start with but I am getting used to it and getting much better quality sleep now. Also I was falling asleep while feeding sitting up which was dangerous. A book called Sweet Sleep has lots of good co-sleeping advice (although I wasn't the biggest fan of the book overall!).
• Each take some time to yourselves while the other person has the baby. Even an hour having a bath, reading a book, popping to the shops or going for a pint with a friend will help your sanity.
• Go for a walk with the baby in the pram every day. Daylight and fresh air works wonders with regulating their body clocks and the exercise is a great mood lifter for you too.
• When you are ready to tackle the underlying issues, don't try to fix everything at once. Break the day down into naps, bedtime, and nighttime wakings and focus on one at a time. Maybe try starting with the daytime naps as it is much easier than 3am when all you desperately want to do is sleep.
• Make "sleep begets sleep" your mantra. I learned the hard way that overtiredness is the worst possible enemy. Try to figure out your baby's maximum awake window (my DD's is currently two hours). As soon as she shows signs of tiredness, she is already getting past the golden time where she will be easy to settle. If I get to my daughter on time, she will feed or rock to sleep quite easily, will transfer to the cot and stay asleep for about 45 mins (she loves her cot during the day, hates it with a passion after 8pm). If I leave her too long she will scream and sleep fitfully and usually wake early creating a vicious cycle of overtiredness and no napping.
• Be thorough with winding especially if you feed to sleep. My DD has woken after 10 mins screaming, I have shush patted for what feels like forever, only to lift her because she won't stop crying and she does a massive burp!
• Have a bedtime routine even if baby is not taking the slightest bit of notice! It relaxes them and separates day and night. I do a short massage (not a bath every night as she doesn't need it and I don't always have the energy at the end of the day!), change of clothes and feed to sleep in a darkened room. She was waking and feeding in 30-45 minute cycles until 10/11pm but it is improving. Last night she slept from 8pm to 11pm (albeit on my lap not in her cot!) which was a massive improvement. I am hoping to get her used to longer sleep cycles and interval between feeds and then work on putting her down later.
• We all go to bed together about 11pm and co-sleep. She wakes about 2-3 times during the night, feeds for a bit lying down and then we both fall asleep. I usually wake another few times through discomfort so it's not ideal, but it is better than fighting with her to get her in the cot or pacing the floor for hours with a screaming overtired baby. This is something I will work on later.

Sorry for the long winded response, it's taken me ages but actually was quite therapeutic for me to write. My heart went out to you (especially when it started getting a bit nasty on this thread). I really hope things improve soon and I have given you some tips that might help. At least you know you are not alone in dealing with this!

Bhar78, so much of what you write is familiar to me. Thanks for writing it. We'll keep plugging away (what choice do we have), and I agree routine is necessary. My wife seems to be having slightly more success lately with getting her to nap in the daytime, which may suggest we are turning a corner.

www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/is-this-normal/
Hi - I haven't read through all of this thread but I saw your initial post a few days ago and read this yesterday and thought of you. I hope life becomes a bit easier for you soon.

OP - has her sleep improved at all yet? Hope so!

Hi everyone,

Yes, things have improved, I am pleased to say! It turns out that my snoring was affecting her, and if I sleep in another room she sleeps for much longer.

It still takes an age to get her to feel asleep in the first place though, and she's napping even less during the day.

In the meantime, I am sleeping on the sofabed until we move house. Not terribly convenient, but hugely helpful for getting some sleep.

Hi there, I'm just wondering how you're getting on? Lots of what you have said about your DD is very similar to my DS and things seem to be getting worse! Did you have any progress with the dairy intolerance? How you are having more settled nights!

As I said above we're managing by sleeping in the living room and letting baby sleep alone so she doesn't hear my snoring. It also helps my wife when she co-sleeps, as baby squirms less and has more space in the bed.

The diary intolerance thing was a red herring - she had no dairy intolerance and just had an immature epiglotis. It's made a sudden change and she's spewing much less than she used to.

So we are broadly speaking sleeping longer and better, just not in the same rooms!

Good to hear things are getting better, the more sleep she has the better her sleep will become. Hope she's starting to nap in the day too.

My partner also sleeps on the sofa bed! Well he transfers to there usually about 3am as baby starts being noisy and thrashing about so it gives us more space in the bed. It's only temporary though and as long as you're both getting more sleep that's the important thing. Also we realised that the night light we were using was keeping her awake from 3am onwards so she's slept much better since we got rid of it.