Yet another 4 month old nightmare sleep thread... I guess I'm just looking for some reassurance.
DS is just over 4 months and for the past weeks his sleep has completely nose dived. My many early hours googling says this is normal, I just want to check we're doing everything we can and it's just a case of waiting for it to pass? He was a pretty good sleeper before, now some nights (like last night) he doesn't sleep for more than 2hrs at a time and we're so, so tired. This is what we're doing at the moment...
- He typically has 3 naps a day, totalling around 4hrs. These are all either on me or in the pram. He doesn't go more than 2hrs between naps, aside from at the end of the day as the bedtime routine approaches depending on when he last napped. I try to minimise this though.
- Around half 6 we'll bath him, quick massage and book, then I'll feed him (he's EBF) and transfer him to his moses basket
- There are black out blinds in his nursery and our room, where he sleeps at the moment
- We use white noise or an actual fan as it's been so warm recently
- We use sleeping bags which we really like and he's been in these since he was big enough
- He's been super distracted whilst feeding during the day so I always attempt to feed him every 2hrs or less to keep him full during the day
- if he wakes up not long after a feed DH will walk with him on his shoulder and he does drop off so I'm not always feeding him to sleep. We've even brought the pram up to the bedroom and settled him that way in desperation
He has occasionally still done a 4hr, and once a 6hr, period of sleep in the last few weeks which gives me hope, this last week has been particularly bad though.
We have tried putting him down drowsy but he's never gone for this and we've decided to leave it until 6 months when he will hopefully be over this period before trying again.
He's generally a really happy baby, and when we've changed his nappy in the night to make sure it's not that making him uncomfortable, he's super smiley and gurgles (we try not to engage with him during the night).
So is it just a case of, yes this is really crap but it will pass and we just have to endure it?