Active baby while sleeping

[Tangi88]

My 4 month daughter has been lately very active during her sleep. By that I mean that while she is asleep she starts every one hour approximately to move a lot with closed eyes, her head goes from side to side, she starts moving arms and legs and after a while she starts making little noises until she finally wakes herself up.

We are cosleeping (I.e sharing the double bed just the two of us - my husband is at the spare room for now) and although she has plenty of space to move freely, she just can’t settle. Also , she is exclusively breastfed and the cosleeping helps as I give her the boob when she starts doing that which most of the time helps. However, even with the boob it takes around 30’ for her to go back to sleep again... and she is not a fan of a dummy!

I don’t think that it’s a 4 month regression issue as she never managed to sleep more than 3 hours in a row. She wakes up most of the time around 1-2 hours from when she was newborn.

Also, she doesn’t like swaddling and it’s also hot these days so I wouldn’t try it.

Any tips, suggestions, similar experiences would be very useful!

Thank you :-)

Head side to side is a classic attempt at self-soothing, as is other thrashing type movements. It's borne from frustration, basically saying "AUGH! I want to be asleep, get me back to sleep, I'm tired! I WANT TO BE ASLEEP!" (caps deliberate, it is a shouting type of communication).

Dummy will help here.

Thanks for your response!

She doesn’t like dummies and when I try put it it when she is at this state she spits it out.

Giving her the boob will do the job though most of the times and make her asleep...

But I am afraid I am creating sleep associations by doing that!

Any help?

Last night I just left it to her to self soothe and the end result was to fully awake herself and stay awake from 11pm - 2am , when she got asleep with bouncing 😞 (that’s my last resort).

Any advise or experience how to help her would be really helpful as I am very sleep deprived ... !!!!

You are creating a sleep association by feeding to sleep.

The answer isnt to not offer any help to get to sleep, babies need sleep associations. If you dont help baby to go to sleep then you'll end up with a baby who wakes up and cant get to sleep. The key is to make a sleep association that is acceptable to you longer term and (crucially) one that works.

That's why dummies are great, they allow for a longer term journey towards independent sleep. I would preserver much more to get a dummy accepted.

If not the dummy then other ways to help baby go to sleep are rocking to sleep, cuddling to sleep, feeding to sleep. You'll note all of these need you to do the work.

Thanks! Hmm... yes that’s true and that’s my fear!
Creating sleep associations that involve me.

Do you think it’s next to offer the dummy all day long or only at sleep time? Does it matter?

At the moment I give it to her any time she is frustrated during the day I.e. when in car seat or just fuzzy.

At night though she refuses it as she knows that I am next to her and I have the real thing...

Do you think I should stop associate dummy with day fuzziness? 🤷🏻‍♀️

I don't start the 'dummy for sleep time only' thing until the 6-9 months old range (once you start getting long daytime naps, done in the cot).

I'm weary to say to give dummy for daytime fussiness - because daytime fussiness means baby needs to either feed or sleep. So rather than giving a dummy, you should instead either be feeding baby or helping baby to go to sleep.

I would feed upon waking up from a nap, so that by the time next nap comes along you know that the fussiness is definately not hunger. That then means crying = time for a nap. So out comes dummy and into bouncy chair for a daytime nap.

As an approximation, my advise on dummy restriction would be:

• Under 6 months - Use whenever baby is upset, as long as not using dummy to replace a need (sleep or feed). But if baby is happy, no dummy needed.
• 6-12 months - Gradually moving towards dummy for sleep time only, so that by...
• 12 months plus - Dummy never leaves the cot and is only used for sleep.

Oh thanks!!! That’s very useful.

I will insist on dummy at night then, do what you advised re feedings and fingers crossed !!! :-)