4.5month old won’t sleep please help!

[Lostnames]

Hi, not really posted here before apart from when I found out I was pregnant.
I’m really looking for advice before I lose my mind, I’m at my breaking point.
My LG is 20 weeks, for the past 6 weeks she has been an absolute nightmare with sleep. Before this point she slept 6-8hrs at night then woke every 1hr and had regular day naps.
She now refuses to nap longer than 30mins in the day and I struggle to get her to nap at all she has maximum 3 naps if I can manage it. At night we do a bedtime routine around 6-7pm and hope she’s asleep by 7:30, she will then wake after 30 mins, and I have to resettle, she then wakes after another 30mins and then wakes at 10 for a feed and then continues to wake every 1-2hrs after that I mostly feed her to sleep as she won’t settle any other way.
Initially when I put her in her cot she will kick her legs up twist her head side to side, gurgle a lot and babble then she gets upset assuming because she’s so tired.
She feeds regularly throughout the day around every 2hrs and is breastfed. She’s suddenly become a bottle refuser aswell so I can’t even catch a break.
I’m at my wits end and just don’t know what to do at this point I’m exhausted and emotionally I feel awful. If anyone has any useful advice please help!

Down load the wonder weeks app, I found it helpful to know when they are going through a "leap" and that a sudden change in behaviour is normal.

Got the wonder weeks leap 4 supposedly ended last week 😭

Lots of people end up on mumsnet when the 4 month sleep regression hits.

It passes, eventually but there often isn't a quick fix, it's a developmental stage.

You just sadly have to adapt to a new normal for a while and not take it as a sleight on your parenting. Find breaks where you can and remember that whilst in the moment it feels utterly overwhelming it's just a very small (but very difficult) stage in their life.

Good luck

I am just about to enter the dreaded 4 month sleep regression- and have been reading a lot about it. It's a developmental stage - where babies start sleeping more like adults. They cycle between light and deep sleep more, compared to before this where they sink straight into a deep sleep. Hence the super short naps as they are cycling back into light sleep and can't resettle themselves into sleep themselves. And at night if they are fed/rocked/etc to sleep then when they come out of a sleep cycle they don't know how to get back into it, which is why they wake us up to do whatever it is we did to get them to sleep in the first place. I have been reading that teaching self settling without the sleep associations (food, rocking, etc) is the way to go. So if you can teach your baby to be put down awake and get to sleep by themselves then they can do that when they wake up at 2am! I know not exactly the resolution we want, but it's something you can maybe look into? Some ways to teach self soothing, self settling etc. Good luck!

It might help to rope in your partner for a bottle feed overnight since you are mixed feeding. Stay well away and he/she will be comforted by a parent who doesn't smell of milk.

It's soul destroying when they go backwards isn't it?!

It's a tough time - leap 4 is horrible and lasts forever then 4 month sleep regression then leap 5! I'm counting down the days until leap 5 ends...it's like a switch flips with him that suddenly he can't nap and sleeps much worse at night when he hits a leap!!

Things that I think (?) have helped:

• some very gentle sleep training where I taught him to self settle (it's pretty hit and miss whilst in a leap but he was going to sleep by himself really well between leaps). I patted his tummy whilst 'shushing' for blocks of 6 minutes. If he wasn't asleep in that 6 minutes, I picked him up, had some cuddles and tried again. I always stopped if he got upset.

• I let him have more naps - or if he's napped really badly I put him to bed really early. If he needs it for some naps I cuddle him through it as then he gets a decent nap in and isn't a horrible monster.

He's still not great at night but the day is a bit better which makes it feel survivable!

Oh, and co-sleeping when I'm really tired and he's really unsettled!

@Lostnames you have literally described my DS who is also 20 weeks. We have identical problems to you with regards to the sleep and bottle refusing.

We have tried so many different approaches to try and help the situation with no luck so far, so i would also be interested in any advice people have.

I’m also driving myself crazy over this ‘put them down drowsy but awake’ and ‘shh pat’ stuff. Have you managed either of these? If I put my little one down in any way other than asleep he just kicks about and plays with his feet or cries until I pick him back up and rock him to sleep. The whole shh pat thing just doesn’t work for us. I find myself feeding him to sleep most of the time so am concerned I’m making a rod for my own back. But at 3am and the fourth wake up of the night I’m too exhausted to do anything else.

It may not be much help but at least we are in this together! I will keep trying with new things and let you know if any work!

I know it’s just so shattering!
If we put her down it doesn’t matter if shes drowsy or asleep she will wake up and scream or she will randomly kick about and gurgle and shout for ages!!
I’m the same I shh pat for ages with no result, I end up putting the dummy in and she decides she doesn’t like that anymore (blessing and a curse!), I’ve rocked, I’ve tried feeding to sleep which doesn’t work at the initial stage only throughout the night. Bringing bedtime forward, making bedtime later, white noise, story time, dark as dark can be, but to no avail! It’s worse when they won’t take a bottle as you can’t even get a hour or two rest!
Hope it sorts itself out for you soon 😭