Sleep training a 4mo

[ihatepickingausername]

My 4mo is a terrible sleeper anyway, waking up every 2 hours, sometimes less. But she seems to of hit the lovely 4 month sleep regression where I'm lucky if she sleeps for a solid hour!

She is bf so I deal with most of the night wakes (until around 5am/6am when DH takes over if baby is not hungry). We have already established a good bed time routine where she knows it's bed time and settles really quick, but that is her settling with me cuddling/rocking her and waiting until she is in a deep sleep before putting her down. I know this is where the problem is but she cries if she's put down awake.

I'm obviously very exhausted so I think now is a good time to try sleep training. Does anyone have any tips for how's best to do this?

Sleep training isn't recommended now until at least a year old as they just don't understand what is happening. So much is going on with their little minds at this time that they need assistance in going back to sleep. I know how exhausting it is as my daughter who is now 6 months woke every 45 mins during the sleep regression! It's better now and she wakes 2-3 times a night, sometimes just once.

@HT85

There is such conflicting advice everywhere (like everything in motherhood I suppose) most places i read that leaving it that late is too late and makes it much more difficult. How can I teach my baby to sleep? I can't physically go on like this for much longer!

No. Too young. By at least 8 months.

So sorry @ihatepickingausername if it seemed i was being unhelpful. I do know how it feels honestly. There are things you could try that others might suggest that they would call 'gentle' such as in cot settling but for me I just tell myself it's not going to be forever. Soon enough baby will start stretching out the sleeping time and it'll get longer and longer between resettling time. Can you go to bed earlier/nap when baby naps? X

Far too young. It's normal for the four month sleep regression to be hellish tbh. It won't last forever. Can you nap during the day when the baby sleeps? Or go to bed earlier? It will get better on it's own you don't need to do anything.

Getting down for naps is a battle, yesterday it took me 3 1/2 hours to get her for for 2x 45mins stretches, and they had to be on me. She'd wake the second I put her down. Which is fine if I can sleep but when it takes that long I'm hungry and needing the toilet too much to sleep. I go down an hour after her each night, enough time to have a cuppa and get myself ready for bed.

At the moment she wakes, I cuddle to sleep or feed, she falls asleep on me and I have to wait 10-15mins before I can put her down (if I rush this and put her down too early I have to start all over again) and then settle myself to sleep and maybe get 20mins sleep before she wakes again. Tried co-sleeping but she still needs comforted.

That's very young for sleep training. I would leave it till much older, as apart from anything else sleep patterns change a lot during the first year and you might find your self having to go through it every few months. Some babies just don't sleep! My first child only slept for 40 mins at a time for the first 5 months - day and night!

@Namelesswonder how on earth did you get through that?
I cant even rely on caffeine as baby seems to have a sore tummy when I drink it.

@ihatepickingausername did you find you got more rest cosleeping? Because if it works, go for it! There's nothing wrong with a 4 month old needing comforting to sleep it's normal, you may find you are fighting against it for a long time as baby is just doing what comes naturally.

@ihatepickingausername It was hell! Most if it's a blank to be honest but I do remember falling asleep standing in a queue once. I caught pneumonia when she was 3 months old and had a blissful few days in bed while my mum looked after DD and I just fed her (parents live several hours away so weren't usually able to help). We tried everything, all the different sleep training suggestions and nothing worked. Just keep repeating to yourself 'this will pass and it will get better'. No helpful advice really except try and go easy on yourself and accept its nothing you are doing wrong, it's just the way some babies are.

Gosh why would you just put up with that .
You don't need to do cio or cc to sleep train.

Hopefully fate will be along soon she has good advice but ultimately your issue is baby goes to sleep in your arms . They need to go to sleep where they stay asleep
In cot settling or embracing co sleeping are your best options

Your baby is not too young to be sleep trained. They are too young for CC or CIO. They are not the only 2 methods of sleep training. Sleep training can also be a case of cuddling baby to sleep in a co-sleeping crib whilst patting and then gradually reducing the amount of input you give.

Mine was a bit older than yours and we used PU/PD to train her but she was practically out of the 4 month regression by that point. I'm not experienced enough to advise on training whilst in the regression but you definitely can work towards improving sleep gently from now, it just won't have the quick resolution that CC does but I get the impression that you don't mind if thats the case.

I'm sorry, way way to young for sleep training. Personally, I think it's cruel, especially when they have no idea what's going on.

It's tough, my son was a terrible sleeper at that age, but I really think it's just part of having a new-born.
It gets better!

I agree, 4mo is too early. But I did find with both of mine that 6mo was the right time. Until then, I just got through it. That's all you can do, really. Seriously - you can't force a baby/toddler to sleep, eat or poop/pee. All you can do is create an environment that's conducive to those things happening, and if they still don't do what you want them to just remind yourself repeatedly that it won't last forever. I always found it freeing knowing I'd done what I could - if the baby's crap, nothing you can do other than get through it. Which you will.

These months are hard, but it is SO NORMAL for babies to want to fall asleep on/next to someone. She's spent 9 months listening to your heartbeat, she needs you now as she adjusts to the outside world. It does get better. I miss these days now I have a 2.5 toddler!

@riddles26 @DopeyDill thanks, I wasn't planning on leaving her to cio for hours until she falls asleep, I was hoping to find some advice on a gentler method.
How do I get her to settle in her crib when she cries the minute I put her down though?

I get that it's part of having a baby, but with a massive improvement of her settling once we cracked the bed time routine and avoiding over tiredness (used to take 4 hours every evening, now just feed and to sleep) I figured there must be ways to improve her staying asleep also.

Too young. At 4 months you would only be causing unnecessary stress for your LO. It's frustrating but the sleep regression is just a part of it; it'll get better, I promise. Bunker down with tea, biscuits and Netflix and best of luck xx

We got a sheepskin insert thing for the pram and found DD would sleep better on that if we laid her on it. TBH I wouldn't want to sleep on a hard cot mattress if I was a newborn used to a warm squishy tummy.

@ihatepickingausername I didn't think you were planning to do that but I feel most posters who are saying she is too young are referring to that rather than the gentle approach of slowly teaching her to fall asleep and put herself back to sleep when she stirs.

From my experience, she will cry when you put her down because in my case, my daughter didn't want to sleep and was used to me giving in as soon as she protested. (She resisted sleep with all her strength - wouldn't fall asleep by rocking, feeding, movement etc) I had to teach her that she had to go to sleep and it was not a negotiation. She did cry to this but I would pick her up and cuddle her until the second she stopped crying then put her back down again. And kept repeating until she eventually fell asleep.

You don't have to use this method though - Im sure there is a way you can lie next to her and cuddle her or if she falls asleep in your arms, put her down as she's more and more awake each time (if that makes sense). Although Ive briefly seen these methods mentioned, I don't feel like I know enough about them to be able to instruct on them. Im hoping someone else will come along and advise better.

You definitely don't have to just put up with stretches of no longer than 2 hours though, you can gently and gradually encourage her to sleep longer stretches with age appropriate methods.

She's too young to have space in her brain for learning what behaviours you want. She's too busy trying to learn who the people around her are, how her body works, how to fart more effectively, the relationship between food in and hunger decreasing, etc etc. She can't even distinguish between thirst and hunger yet.

'Success' at sleep training at this age is basically getting to the point where their survival instinct realises that crying / signaling for attention isn't getting a response so is a waste of energy. It's not consciously learnt, and getting to that point results in a fair amount of unpleasantness IMO even if not doing CIO as you are basically trying to demonstrate to them you won't respond beyond a certain point. Harsh lesson so young.

And I have a LOT of experience of bad sleepers. Hence why we have the biggest bed in the world, as co sleeping was the way forward for us.

Too young... sorry.

I also had one that woke at least every hour, sometimes every twenty minutes. And he did it for 18 months. It was really no fun at all.

What did I learn during this 18m hell? Well I learned that there actually isn't that much you can do past a point. You can look at awake times, have a good routine, dark nights, light days, blah blah and that certainly helps. But only to a point.

Nothing kept my son asleep. Nothing. We tried sleep consultants, even ended up at the hospital in despair. There was nothing wrong with him, he just didn't bloody sleep. They offered to drug him. We refused that (then regretted it...)

Now yes, you can probably train anything to do anything. The problem is what you have to do to achieve the result and whether that's something you can tolerate. I did all the things I could tolerate. Routines, all the advice, even controlled crying (that made it a million times worse by the way.) I couldn't tolerate shutting the door and leaving him till morning so we didn't do that.

How did we cope? Well we gave up. We gave up trying to make him sleep because we had zero control over it. Instead we changed what we could about our lives. We slept in shifts. We made sure each of us had a few hours a day to sleep. And that actually helped a lot.

He hated the cot so we co slept. That helped. Then we put him in a toddler bed in a baby proofed room and that helped Too. At 18m it was like a switch. Bang - from every fucking hour to through the night. Incredible- and absolutely nothing we did.

4 months is regression time and unfortunately you just need to hang on and get through it. It sucks massively (this was one of our every twenty minute times) but it will pass (honest.) make sure each of you does a shift every day to give the other one a break and make sure each of you does a long shift one day at the weekend.

They do, eventually, sleep. There just isn't much you can do about it for a while. My sympathies because I know how hard it is.

Oh yes sleeping in shifts is important!

Do you have a bedside cot/crib (one where the side lets down so your bed and the cot mattress are at the same height)?

I had terrible sleepers and a bad back so for this awful sleep regression I found that feeding to sleep lying tummy to tummy with baby on the mattress not in my arms helped....I would feed to sleep then wriggle gently away to the other side of the bed (for sleeping) leaving baby breathing in the mummy scented sheets (hopefully).

In the evening if you have a partner around he/she could lie next to your baby.
Do let them help...even if it's quicker for you to do it, it will help you and your baby will not suffer. They could rock whilst you have a cuppa/bath.

settles really quick, but that is her settling with me cuddling/rocking her and waiting until she is in a deep sleep before putting her down. I know this is where the problem is but she cries if she's put down awake

Nail & Head

The no-crying quick answers involve

• Dummy and sidecar cot
• Feed to sleep and cosleeping

You need to get baby going to sleep where she stays asleep. As a general rule doing this without any crying will involve cuddling and sucking. The two above are two different ways to achieve thd same thing.

• The first is conducive to independant sleep (sidecar cot allows for in-cot settling, dummy instead of feeding to sleep)

• The second more attachment parenting (nothing wrong with feeding to sleep but baby needs to stay there, which means cosleeping)

Both are what I'd consider gentle, kind and completely appropriate from newborn. Certainly from 4 months.

So - could you get baby to take a dummy? Are you able to take one side off your full sized cot and wedge it up to your bed? How do you feel about cosleeping? What are your extended plans regarding breastfeeding?

If none of these are feasible, there's going to be tears. So first question needs to be - would you cope with baby crying and be consistant through it? If not, just muddle through best you can.

Personally speaking, I would not do any of the distressing methods for getting baby to sleep. But it's doable. What you don't need to do is leave baby alone to cry. Not at this age, it's too young.

But what you could do is establish in-cot settling, with you there doing all the comforting. That might involve PUPD at this age: picking up to comfort and sooth, putting down with a firm hand on chest. It needs complete and total consistancy.

Some additional regardless of what methods you do/don't use at night:

• good daytime sleep promotes good night time sleep. Keep short naps frequent by limiting awake time to 60-90m vetween naps
• extra help is likely to be needed for daytime naps compared to night sleep. I would add in movement (along with dummy). I favour naps in the bouncy chair for this reason. Rocking pram back and forth does similar.
• In the daytime fed feed feed feed and feed some more. A hungry baby or one on the low side of calorie intake won't sleep well. Calorific need increases massively around 4 months. Lots of big, frequent feeds all day.
• Dummy! I honestly believe it is the single most important tool for no-crying independant sleep. I would be mega, massively persistant to get one accepted.

Urn... There's probably more, but I've eritten tons there. Hope that helps.