Baby keeps waking up after she's put down at night

[mumac]

Struggling to get our 5 month old daughter to stay asleep once she is put down at night. Previously no problem

Routine:
Bath her
Put into sleep suit
Turn off all sounds and dim lights
Feed
Put to sleep between 7:30/8:30

Once asleep our baby often wakes up crying and will either be rocked to sleep by my husband or fed by myself, both of these get her to sleep no problem but she continues to wake up until we come up to bed around 10:30 so we find ourselves going in and out of the room all night.

She used to go down around 8:30 and stay asleep until 2:30/3;00 but has struggled to stay asleep for the last month or so

Any tips welcome

Sounds like the classic 4 month sleep regression! Apparently around 4 months babies sleep changes, and they wake more fully between their sleep cycles. This means that between cycles they need to fall asleep from scratch all over again. So if you feed to sleep, or rock to sleep etc, they will wake up at the end of the next sleep cycle and need feeding or rocking to sleep again. The key is putting them down awake, so they learn to self settle and fall asleep by themselves. It takes a bit of patience at first, lots of patting and shushing and rocking to calm them, but if they can learn to fall asleep by themselves, they can also put themselves back to sleep in the middle of the night. Good luck, I am currently in this at the moment with my 4.5 month old!

This does sound like the four month sleep regression, though I don’t personally agree with the comment above about putting baby to sleep drowsy but awake. Sleep is developmental and it is perfectly normal for babies to wake, especially when going through developmental leaps.

I would recommend purchasing the app Wonder Weeks. It will calculate when your baby is going through developmental leaps and during those periods it is common for babies to sleep poorly and be particularly fussy.

Also check out this article:

sarahockwell-smith.com/2014/06/30/self-settling-what-really-happens-when-you-teach-a-baby-to-self-soothe-to-sleep/

Our twins are 5 months old today. They refused to sleep in their bedside cribs at 3 months and we have been bedsharing since. They sleep so much better now - 7pm to 5.30/6am with only a couple of wake ups and no feeds. Google the Safe 7 on how to bed share safely. I would also recommend the Beyond Sleep Training Project group on Facebook.

This will pass. Just hang on in there.

As pp have said, four-month regression. Although I also disagree you can teach a baby anything, or that self-settling necessarily helps – it all depends on the baby. Eg DD is perfectly capable of waking up and putting herself back to sleep, but most of the time chooses to wake up and about/cry/dick about instead.