Another one about the 4 month regression, I’m afraid... (I hope this is the regression and not just the way life is now!)
My 17 week old now won’t sleep unless I feed him to sleep (not really feeding, just comfort sucking) and then I hold him until he is properly asleep before putting him in the next to me.
How can I change this or do I have to ride it out until the regression ends?
It wasn’t always this way. He has never been the best sleeper, he never got past the 3 hourly waking. It didn’t occur to me that this was a problem until he was 3 months old. I started doing the Pantley pull off and getting him slightly awake before putting him down. He started stretching his first sleep of the night to 4 or even 5 hours.
Over the last few weeks, things have got gradually worse and now he is waking around every 90 mins, won’t settle until I feed him. Even if he is slightly asleep when he goes into his crib, he wakes and we have to go through the whole saga again. I’m knackered already, not to mention sore. I think the chances are, we are only just getting to the worst bit of the regression so I could have another month or more to go!
This seems to have coincided with total failure to achieve the late afternoon nap on a daily basis.
My partner is ill at the moment (we think food poisoning but he is staying in the spare bedroom to be sure he doesn’t pass anything on to us). Once he is better, we are thinking of getting him to do bedtime with a bottle and settling him away from the boob. I don’t even know if that will work but we might as well try.
Does anyone have any words of wisdom?