Sleep regression/vaccinations/jet lag help

[Esindi]

Hi,

My DD is 20 weeks and has suddenly stopped sleeping through the night. At the moment she’s waking up every 2 hours to feed and I’m slowly loosing my mind. In the day she’s grumpy and fractious and I’m trying to keep her from long naps in case it makes the night worse. I know it doesn’t work like that but we just got back from a family visit to the other side of the world so it could be jet lag, which would mean changing her day/night round, or it could be her 4 month sleep regression or the vaccinations she had this week. Or that she’s trying a bit of apple purée this week?

I honestly don’t know what to do for the best as the poor thing has had a right week, but I’m a wreck and I’m scared that she’ll never go back to normal or that I’m fostering bad habits.

Please help! Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Probably jet lag - It recently took my 8 month old 2 weeks to get back into his old sleeping routine after being on holiday.

Thank you for answering! Was that just the one way? DD was fine going there but is really struggling now. I, and most people, find it worse the way back but she’s usually so happy and sleeps fanatically an feed that’s just gone. How did you help yours? Or manage your way through it?

If you've gone West to East (eg UK to NZ) then it can be horrifically bad.

I did that trip with a 6mo and when we got to the UK it only really took a day or two to right itself, so I was pretty shocked on the return leg to find it was more like 10 days!

I remember her falling asleep in the pram around 4.30 and knowing that I'd need to wake her up by 5 to have any chance of a decent nights' sleep for either of us, I tried to wake her up, but nope. So my usual light-sleeper was bolt upright in her pushchair with her head nodding up and down

The only thing you can do is stick to your routine as much as possible during the day and just make sure you are treating night as night, ie dim lights, no talking etc etc.

Thank you @Limpshade. It was UK back to Oz, she’s a resilient little thing but this has knocked her about!

We’re also on our knees wondering when it will end. Glad to know that it will though! I’ll keep trying to wake her up from her naps then- she’s very like how you described your LO. She’ll keep her eyes closed and just grin when we try to wake her! I’ve been trying to get her out and about but then start wondering if it’s the 4 month sleep regression or vaccination side effects. I think you’re right with the jet lag though.

We did that trip with a 4 month old and it was pretty rough for about 2 weeks after.
Keep trying to stick to your routine, and get outside as much as possible during the day
Good luck!

Sounds like DP and I will have to do sleep shifts again for a while until she gets over this then. Thank you for your advice. She’s just fallen asleep on her change mat And isn’t waking for love nor money, so definitely the jet lag.

We started with a much later bedtime when we first got back and then gradually shifted his bedtime routine back to what time it usually is - seemed to work ok but we did have some night-waking (he normally sleeps through)

Thank you @HungryForApples that’s a great idea and something I wouldn’t have thought of because we’re so knackered too!