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4 month old naps and bedtime

8 replies

wineapotamus · 10/07/2017 13:40

Right, don't want to chew your ears off with an essay, so will try and keep it brief, but could do with some help.

4 month old is happy baby, meeting milestones, contented, doing well. She goes 9-6 at night with a dreamfeed at 11ish. Night times always been good. Day time naps, dreadful. Used to sleep in bouncy chair, now takes 40 mins to drop off with sadness, sleeps for 15 mins. I've tried cot, white noise hand on chest etc; no joy-much sadness. Pushchair works for morning nap, which can be up to two hours but is more likely to be 45. Ring sling works in the morning for a long nap, but not in afternoon, and is becoming harder, as she's heavy. She'll fall asleep with boob in mouth, but only for 15 mins or so.
Bedtime is a nightmare, it can take 2 hours to get her to fall asleep on me, she wakes if we transfer her to the sleepyhead, so I end up holding her and shoving a boob in her face when she twitches. I feel like I've created an association with boob and sleep, but she's too little to sleep train (or at least it's not right for me).
So my questions are

  1. Can I break the feed/nap cycle?
  2. How to get a longer nap than 15 minutes?
  3. Any bedtime strategies to get my evening back? I just want a bath and a tiny break from her!
  4. Does it really matter or should i just go with it? I spent a lot of ds's babyhood worrying about naps (and everything!) and don't want to be the same this time. So, and strategies to be breezy about her nap refusal.
Strange girl-naps are ace! Anyway, thank you. Sorry it's long!
OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
wineapotamus · 10/07/2017 13:55

She just fed to sleep on our bed lying down and then woke after 7 minutes! I've reinserted boob so she's feeding/dozing again, but really! 7 minutes?! 😩

OP posts:
indigo13 · 10/07/2017 14:05

Have you heard of the 4 month sleep regression?

wineapotamus · 10/07/2017 14:12

Yep but at the moment her nighttime sleep seems unaffected. And the current situation has been gradually getting worse for a couple of months.

OP posts:
FATEdestiny · 10/07/2017 14:51

Could you try a dummy if she likes to comfort suck?

1. Can I break the feed/nap cycle?

If you want to, yes. Following EASY (eat activity sleep you time) means feeding upon waking, not going to sleep. This can only work if you have an alternate way to get baby to sleep though

2. How to get a longer nap than 15 minutes?

Don't move her when she falls asleep. Keep conditions the same as when she fell asleep. So if falling asleep on your breast, that means keeping her there. Or maybe get her to go to sleep with dummy in the bouncer and keep that perpetual movement going once she drops off. Or keep the pushchair moving, or the car going if in there.

The key is to not transfer or move baby once asleep. Then having something to suck and some rhythmic movement helps too.

3. Any bedtime strategies to get my evening back? I just want a bath and a tiny break from her!

With all due respect, why are you stressing about bedtime at 4 months old? Put toddler to bed, park yourself in the sofa, let baby clusterfeed and nap on and off until you go to bed.

As time goes on the cluster feeding will lessen and the evening napping will lengthen until baby is spending most ofctge evening napping (in whatever ususl place baby naps downstairs, for me that was the bouncer).

At that point, then move bedtime to early evening, when you know you won't be required for the duration. That's been around 5-6 months for us, usually.

There really is no reason for you to be wasting 2h of your evening faffing with your tiny baby in a darkened room when you could be watching Poldark

4. Does it really matter or should i just go with it?

If matters for your sanity. Mostly your sanity will be better served by just going with it. But if you need some personal space away from baby, that's fine too. You'll need to help baby sleep independantly though - it doesn't 'just happen'.

wineapotamus · 10/07/2017 15:08

Yes, you're right about bedtime. I think I need to just ride it out. I am downstairs though, feeding her and hoping to get her to fall asleep on me a bit quicker than 2 hours (that makes no grammatical sense, but you get the idea!) I don't move her when she's asleep in the day. She wakes up in fifteen minutes on me, or if I've fed her to sleep lying down in the bed and I've stayed completely still. Like a breastfeeding musical statues champion. The dummy has been soundly rejected so far...maybe I should persevere. Sigh. I feel like I'm making heavy weather of it all.

OP posts:
FATEdestiny · 10/07/2017 15:21

The dummy will be the best bet for into crying independant sleep, if you want some personal space.

Any chance this could be a feeding issue? Calorific need goes up massively around this age.

FATEdestiny · 10/07/2017 15:43

That should say "no crying independant sleep"

wineapotamus · 10/07/2017 23:23

If could be a feeding
Issue I guess. Getting her weighed tomorrow, so will see. She's a dainty thing on the 9th percentile and has had very mucousy poos multiple times (like 8!) a day, for the last week or so, so think that can't be good for weight, although gp wasn't at all worried. This evening was better. I gave up trying to do anything and she managed an hour or so in the sleepyhead after I'd fed her to sleep, so I got to be in a different room. Bliss! Thanks for the advice Fate x

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