Are we starting the 4 month regression?

[OdetteOsborne]

Hi everyone

I am tired and need an outlet .......

I think I have been rather lucky with our babies sleep so far as she has been quite consistent.

She is now 15 weeks and for the past 3 nights we have changed our pattern.

She was going down to bed at 7pm then having her last feed about 10pm. She would then go until 3.30/4am where she would have another feed then back to sleep until 7/7.30. Which was great!

The past 3 nights we have still had our last feed about 10.30 but then she is waking up at 1.30am?? Which consequently means we are waking up about 5.30am .

I use the huckleberry app during the day so she has about 4/5 naps (only about 40 mins long) then same bedtime routine which we have used since she was about a week old.

Her room is dark, white noise, swaddled in a love to dream and we do use the dummy sometimes to help with going off to sleep.

Do I just keep doing what I have been doing and hope it will go back to what she used to do?

Thank you for reading x

I would suggest you need to look at changing her daytime feeds, rather than sleep.

Waking more frequently at this stage is likely to be down to wanting more calories. If you have kept the frequency of daytime feeds the same, then baby gets extra feeds per day by having an extra night feed or two. So baby has gone from wanting two feeds between 7pm-7am, to now needing 3 feeds - which has messed up her learning to sleep for longer periods of time.

So aim to add at least one, preferably two, extra feeds in during the daytime, ie between 7am and 7pm.

You usually cannot get baby to have more milk per feed - because stomach volume is a limiting factor. So the way to get more calories into baby is by making feeds more frequent, so less time between feeds.

Its easier to explain what I mean with bottle feeds because you can see the volumes used, but the same is true for breastfeeding. See these examples:

(1) 5oz four hourly daytime feeds + late feed + one night feed
7am 11am 3pm 7pm 11pm + Night feed
= 5oz x 6 = 30oz in 24h

(2) 5oz four hourly daytime feeds + late feed + two night feed
7am 11am 3pm 7pm 11pm + 2 Night feeds
= 5oz x 7 = 35oz in 24h
(But extra night wake, which isn't ideal for sleep)

(3) 5oz three hourly daytime feeds + late feed + one night feed
7am 10am 1pm 4pm 7pm 11pm + Night feed
= 5oz x 7 = 35oz in 24h

(4) 4oz two hourly daytime feeds + 5oz late feed + one night feed
7am 9am 11am 1pm 3pm 5pm 7pm 11pm + Night feed
= (4oz x 7) + (5oz × 2) = 38oz in 24h

I was hoping I would hear from you :-)

I offer her a bottle every 2.5/3 hours but she does not really drink that much.

Today she has had 4 ounces at 6am (managed to then settle back to sleep for an hour) then 4 ounces at 8am.

About to offer her another bottle now.

What do I do if she is not interested in the milk at those times? She has never been a greedy baby .....

I will try and get more in during the day and see if that helps

So I have just offered another 4 ounce bottle but she has only taken 2 ounces.....

So the first thing to do is to make sure baby is getting enough calories over 24h. Because you can't go for settling baby at night without feeding until you are first certain that baby isn't needing the milk.

Once you're feeling confident that baby is having as much milk as possible during the day, then look at resetting at night without feeding, where possible.

So the kind of process is go through at every night wake past 11pm would be:

• fussing heard from baby - give dummy and cuddle close or lean into the cot. Physical contact for reassurance.
• keep going with this if you get nothing more than fussing (grunting, leg kicking, shuffling etc).
• If crying starts, pick baby up and redo swaddle. Check nappy while doing this. Tighten swaddle and do a quick wind on your shoulder in case of trapped wind.
• As soon as crying stops and baby calms, put baby down and go back to start with dummy and physical closeness in the cot. A sidecar cot helps with this. Patting to heart-beat rate may help. Tap outside of dummy to keep active sucking.
• Give this resettle (after being put back down) a good 5-10 mins. Only if that doesn't settle baby would I go for a feed. By that point you have checked baby is comfortable in nappy, secure in the swaddle, comfort sucking and has the comfort of your reassurance and so the only other thing it could be is that baby needs calories. But the idea is you try everything else first at night, before milk.

Then look at your baby's night feeds on a week-to-week basis. If you are better able to settle baby without feeding then daytime feeds must be adequate. But if you start finding baby is more and more frequently needing two night feeds, use that as a pointer to say you need to get more calories into baby during the daytime.

The 4 month regression has several "faces" to it. One is the need for (often significant) increase in calorie needs. So this causes disturbed nights. But also that baby needs to learn settling methods that don't involve feeding. But before you can tackle settling without feeding you need to make sure baby doesnt need the extra calories at night, and also that you have an alternate settling method that works (which you have, in the dummy).

Also, it's fine to be strategically flexible with the late evening feed. You can drop it and bring it back at will, to alter night feeds to your benefit.

So for example If you're waking her at 10.30am, then she's waking for another feed at 1.30pm and 5.30am - you will probably find her difficult to settle at 5.30 because the pressure to sleep is low early mornings.

So you might choose to not wake for the 10.30pm feed (even if temporarily). Them accept you might get a 12pm feed and a 4am feed (instead of 10.30 and 1.30). But the pay-off is baby being easier to settle at 4am so you get a later wake-up time.

There are loads of permutations where being flexible with the late feed helps. It can teach baby to sleep longer stretches or shift feeds to move wake-up times.

The problem is I did stop waking her for her dream feed as she never took much. She then started going until midnight/1am before first wake up.

But now we are waking 10.30pm ish and still waking at 1.30am.

I am trying to get as much milk in her today as possible - she has only had 15 ounces so far today since 6am??

@BabySleepTeacherUK

So last night I put her down slightly earlier and she was asleep by 6.30pm. I also used the smaller size love to dream swaddle as she is in-between size small and medium at the moment and I think she likes the feel of the small one as the medium is a bit big at the moment.

Any way, she woke on her own at 11.30pm and took 3 ounces. Then woke again at 4.15am and took 3 ounces and then went easily back down and we woke her up at 7.15am.

Sounds good. Did you try to settle without feeding first? Might be worth trying, you could get down to one night feed only with s bit of practice.

Hi @BabySleepTeacherUK

No i just went into feed as wanted the sleep .
I did exactly the same last night and she woke up at 2.30am 🤷‍♀️. She does actually seem hungry though as drains the bottle??