What am I doing wrong?

[vlooby]

Help!!! Tonight may be the night I reach the end of my tether!

6 month old. Until 3.5 months slept really well at night. One night she woke every 2 hours and since then she wakes at least (on a good night) 3 times.

Used to be able to put her down awake, dummy , white noise and hand on tummy to sleep, that has gradually stopped. Instead needs feeding to sleep. Very occasionally rocking works. As soon as she is put down now to try, back arches and screams.used to resettle with dummy. Now no chance.

Daytime naps rarely over30 minutes with approximately 2 hours awake time . Often can't put her down as she stays on boob.

Currently cosleeping. She is in sleepyhead. Tried own room. Gave up by midnight....

So far tonight, down at 8, awake at 9, 9.40, 10.20.

Away on hols next week, is there something I can do before then? Losing the plot here!
Than,s

you are not doing anything wrong, thats just what babies do.

xxx

Haha I thought I'd get that answer from you lovely people!

I guess I'm just finding it odd how much she has regressed and wondering if there's something I've done to cause it? Or I can do to claw some sleep back..

Google "four month sleep regression". It won't help, but at least you'll know it's nothing you did!

Mine is 7 months and was waking every 20 mins at night before midnight so I'd need to keep resettling. Now it's every hour or so. They stretch the time out - it'll happen x

Daytime naps rarely over30 minutes with approximately 2 hours awake time

That is going to be too much awake time. Would be fine for a 6 month old getting big blocks of lots of sleep over night. Would be fine for a baby having longer 60m plus naps.

I would suggest lying down feed to sleep for naps, cosleep throughout. This isn't a perminant "solution", you just need something (anything ( to enable you to get out of this over tiredness downward spiral and this is the way that's likely to cause the least distress.

I'd keep awake time to 90m or sooner. If it takes 30m to get baby to sleep, start that after 60m awake.

I am not suggesting feeding to sleep lying down and cosleeping for naps is what you need to do always, but realistically baby needs a lot of help right now. Work on what comes next once baby isn't exhausted.

If lying down together and feeding to sleep and staying there for the duration isn't cutting it, my next suggestion would be bouncy chair and don't give up. Be consistant, relentless and unceasing in your rhythmic foot bouncing as you sit on the sofa. Dummy reinserts as needed

The last thing I'll add is: feed, feed, feed and feed some more.

Massive gross motor skill developments at this age. Baby needs continually increasing amounts of calories. Milk is the most effective way to get calories into baby. Don't be fooled by offering low calorie fruit/veg instead of milk.

Thanks all. Have had a good read of the 4 ,nth stuff already- just guess I hope something would've changed by now.

I had worried about extending daytime nope! Feel like hive tried everything!

Oh my goodness....typos.
I've read so much about sleep regression. I guess she's not coming out the other side without major interventions.

I've been trying to extend daytime sleep for ages but nothing seems to work. Haven't tried bouncer for a while as suspect she'll wake up out of it quickly as she used to.

For whatever reason we don't seem to be able to feed laying Down. Is be happy to sit& feed for daytime naps, but they're still never long enough when I do that!

Don't focus on extending naps. Focus on having more naps per day by making them closer together. That stops over tiredness.

You do need some major interventions to get baby's sleep improving after 4 months old.

Sleep changes perminantly away from passive (and fairly easy) newborn sleep and becomes an active endeavour. It will never go back to how it was, this new nature sleep is how sleep will be until about school age.

I'm not sure I like the use of the word "regression" because that suggests if you do nothing everything will return to how it was if you just wait. That is not true, this is a perminant change.

The 4 month sleep "regression" will last as long as it takes you and baby a way that offer a enough help for baby to get to sleep effectively. That active getting-to-sleep method may already be in place at 4 months so you nearly even notice a regression at all. It might take you 3 weeks, 2 months, or 1 year to find a sustainable getting-to-sleep that works - so that's how long the "regression" will last. It will last as long as it takes for you and baby to work out this new skill and get it working. Doing nothing won't help at all.

Thanks fate. We've gone down to 90 mins awake time today.

How would you suggest stopping her needing to feed to sleep? As I mentioned before we used to do dummy, white noise hand on tummy, but she SCREAMS as soon as she is put down now.....

And with self soothing between naps, how can that be 'taught'?

I feel like in my haze I'm missing obvious things....

It really depends how you feel about it. Are you happy to feed to sleep? Is it the easiest option for now? I tend to go with easiest plan of action/least resistance and we're all happy 😊 I'll re-evaluate further down the line if I want to change anything. Remember there's nothing actually wrong with feeding to sleep it is quite natural, it's only actually a problem if you don't want to do it anymore x

You don't need baby to be independantly settling in order to be a "good sleeper" and sleep well.

You can get a perfectly easy fed to sleep baby who drops off within 10 minutes and sleeps for the expected 30-45 minutes in every 2 hours. You can get the same thing from a baby settling independantly - both babies being "good sleepers" and achieving the same outcomes in terms of amount and quality of sleep.

Have a think about the importance of each of the following and how they weigh up against each other in your own parenting philosophy:

• baby sleeping/settling independantly
• baby sleeping well, not over tired
• Baby not being distressed and crying

Really all I want is for her to get enough sleep, which I truly don't think she is at the moment. Anything else (being able to put her down) would be a bonus!