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Is this the 4 month sleep regression?

5 replies

fibeee · 13/07/2020 08:10

In the last week my 15 week old has gone from sleeping through the night to waking at 11:00pm and then every 2 hours until morning. I always offer her the boob which she empties and then passes out on. Then it’s back into her cot with no issues until the next wakening. She also seems a lot more tired in the evenings so we have moved her bedtime back an hour to 6.30pm.

I feel like I’m back to the newborn days again. Am I doing something wrong by offering her the boob every time? Can anyone offer me some hope that this will pass soon?

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Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
fibeee · 13/07/2020 08:13

For full disclosure she isn’t a great napper and only with a lot of encouragement will take 3 1/2 hour naps a day. So I’m keen for her to get a really good sleep at night

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IKEA888 · 13/07/2020 08:20

ah goodness. I'm old fashioned and would say try somefood.
I know that will be slated on here but so 3 of mine did this and as the guidelines were 12 weeks for my eldest i held off as long as I could with my younger two as guidelines kept changing .
but all 3 settled with some baby rice on their tummy and were so much happier.

BabySleepTeacherUK · 13/07/2020 11:16

I think the lack of daytime naps is relivent here. It means baby is more over tired at night making it harder to get into a deeper sleep and to stay asleep for longer periods.

It would be a good idea to have other settling methods in your arsenal, so it's not a feed every time (there is a however... coming). The idea is that you try to settle baby without feeding first - say with a dummy and a bedside cot cuddle, or hand on chest and bend close to shush. Then feeding becomes a settling technique higher up the ladder. So you do other things first and sometimes baby will settle without being fed. But that doesn't mean you refuse a feed, it's still there as an option if other settling methods don't work first.

However....

You can't consider thinking about not feeding at night unless you have two things already in place:

(a) You need to be certain baby is getting enough calories in 24h. The way to do this is to up milk given in the daytime, so you can be sure it isn't needed at night.

Not unusual for calorific need to go up as much as 25% at around 4 months. This is a lot more milk. So if you haven't significantly upped daytime feed frequency then the extra will need to be taken at night as night feeds.

Baby's stomach volume is a limiting factor so the way to get large increases into baby during these growth spurts is to feed more frequently, rather than breastfeeding for longer. So if baby seems to ask for a feed every 3h in the daytime, start offering the breast every 2h, for example.

(b) You need an alternate settling method that works. If you can never settle baby without feeding, then offering alternate settling methods in the night isn't going to help baby settle without a feed it will just delay the inevitable feed that will be necessary. In which case you might as well have fed straight away.

So focus on other settling methods at bedtime and naptime to practice and teach them. While doing this, work on mire frequent daytime naps.

fibeee · 13/07/2020 21:13

@BabySleepTeacherUK thank you for your very detailed reply. Much appreciated

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Rainsworth · 22/07/2020 20:59

My little one went through something really similar at that age, sounds like sleep regression to me. There’s some good tips here if they can help? www.peanut-app.io/posts/5pnh-kdb

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