Advise on 4 month sleeping!

[user1494270143]

Hello,

My son is 4 months old and used to be a good sleeper! But since the 4 month sleep regression has hit, he won’t nap during the day unless he is on me (before I had been putting him in his own cot and leaving the monitor on), and won’t go to sleep any earlier than about 10 o’clock in which he’ll wake up multiple times in the night. Sometimes he just lays in his cot making squeaking noises in the night so it’s not as if he’s hungry all of the time.

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on encouraging a sleeping pattern/naps during the day. Or will it just happen eventually?! I’m a FTM so everything is new, I just wondered what everyone else’s babies were like and if anything helped them!!!

My baby is 15 weeks- he's a terrible napper and he fights sleep. Today up until 5pm he had two naps of 20 mins each. Finally after lots of rocking and a dummy I got him to sleep, he's woken for a feed and gone to sleep.

That's after a night of broken sleep, waking me up for feeds and whale impressions ( banging his legs on the cot like a whale in his gro bag) all night.

We go to bed at 11 and normally asleep by 11.30. He once slept for 6 hours 45 mins when he was about ten weeks and was doing 5 or six hours occasionally. Then at three months he started waking quite often and then went back to five hours from 11.30 till 4.30 and easy to get back to sleep. For the last week he's been a nightmare, whale impressions, won't go back to sleep, awake after 3 hours.

I have no advice. I'm hoping it's a phase and will get better.

My daughter was a terrible sleeper before the 4 month regression (reflux), but absolutely atrocious once it hit. Would not sleep during the day unless in the carrier, and woke every 40 mins in the night, taking 2 hours to resettle. I confess that I had to make some big changes... all day naps were now in her cot, and I did some gentle sleep training during the day to get her to work to a sleep, eat, play 3 hourly routine. She took to a morning nap around 8am quite quickly (I put her down an 1 1/2 hrs after waking as any longer and she would cry and struggle to settle); but she made me really work for the lunchtime sleep. I used the sleep reassurance technique from Alison Scott Wright's book... never letting her cry for more than a few minutes before I went into her nursery to comfort. Would calm her down without saying anything and then leave. This would repeat until she slept. Sometimes she could keep it up for 45 mins! But she soon started to settle herself and after a week was a great day time sleeper. Night times took longer to solve as I wasn't so good at sleep training when I was tired. But at 8 months she finally started sleeping through, which I think was aided by weaning and moving from exclusively breast feeding to formula feeding. I'm sorry there are no quick fix answers... just perseverance and being consistent with a routine.

Oh and I recommend white noise. My hummy's are brilliant as they turn on when the baby stirs. I also use a dummy attached to a sleepytot so she can find it in the night and a humidifier.