Hello, I’ve posted on here before about my daughter’s sleep and got some useful advice, so I’m back for more!
DD is now 17 weeks old and in the past few days I think we’ve entered the four month sleep regression. She’s started waking more frequently overnight wanting the dummy - I think it was roughly hourly wake ups last night from around midnight onwards.
I’ve worked hard with DD to get her to be able to go to sleep where she’s going to stay asleep. Now, for all sleep I put her down in her crib (a next to me one) and she has her dummy and goes to sleep with me lying next to her holding her hands or stroking her face. This is a huge improvement from being fed/rocked/bounced to sleep before being put down (only for her eyes to ping open again!). Her taking a dummy was a big part of us achieving this.
She is currently having three naps a day: 30-45m, 2.25h, and then 30-45m. I often have to resettle her after 30m of her lunchtime nap by replacing the dummy a couple of times but it’s clear she wants to sleep so it’s not difficult to resettle her. However, sometimes she stirs but doesn’t wake fully so I don’t need to do anything. Even from being two months old she has liked an early bedtime so she goes down somewhere around 7, depending on when her last nap ended/how tired she seems. Her awake time before bed is usually 2-2.5 hours (I aim for 2 to be on the safe side). She goes down to sleep contentedly, just some days she takes longer to actually fall asleep than others. She has a dreamfeed (though is taking half the quantity of what she was taking before) and then wakes once for a feed in the night. Sometimes she wakes around five but will settle back to sleep in my arms. Most days I then wake her up for the day around 7.15.
Although DD taking a dummy has improved her sleep significantly, which is great, my worry with it was always what would happen if she needed it replaced between every sleep cycle come the four month regression. I appreciate that popping the dummy back in her mouth is much less effort than having to get up to feed or rock her to sleep, however, waking up every hour is not ideal whichever way you look at it. I’m not sure if this will just resolve itself in a few weeks or whether the dummy is such a sleep prop that she won’t be able to link sleep cycles without it.
Does anyone know whether the regression can resolve itself? Or do I need to do some more work on sleep with DD - possibly to get rid of the dummy? If so - please tell me how as I genuinely don’t know how she’d sleep without it at this point.
Also, just out of interest, did anyone notice a change in the length of their child’s sleep cycles after or during the regression? Did you see nap lengths change etc? Probably due to the monotony of lockdown, I have been finding baby sleep quite interesting to learn about so I’m curious to know what I might see from DD to indicate that her sleep cycles have matured.
Thanks so much in advance.