4 month old waking often in night, sleep training?

[jdy123]

Hello

I know 4 months is still young but my DD has started waking every hour most nights and I have to hold her hand and shush her/kisses or turn on the white noise for her to settle back off again. Sometimes this doesn't work and I have to bring her out for a cuddle

Once we get to 4/5am this doesn't work and I have to bring her into bed with me or she just won't go back to sleep.

She just needs one feed each night and the time varies. But usually between 2-4am.

Is 4 months too young for some kind of sleep training ( not cry it out btw) ? Or could this be a phase and am I best riding it out to see?

She has to be rocked to sleep for nightsleep and naps and most times we put her in next2me , she'll wake back up crying. It's just getting quite frustrating and tiring as she's never been a bad sleeper before.

Have you done much reading about baby sleep? Basically after four months your baby’s sleep cycles mature and they begin to wake very slightly between their sleep cycles. At night, a baby’s sleep cycles are 1 or 2 hours long. Tend to be more like 2 at the start of the night and then 1 towards the middle and end of the night. For baby to ‘link’ their sleep cycles they need to wake very slightly, realise everything is as it was, and they are able to carry on sleeping. If they were being held or fed or rocked etc and wake up and something has changed - I.e. they are in their cot - they will wake fully and cry. Just like if you were sleeping and then suddenly realised you were in a different bed you wouldn’t just carry on sleeping, you would wake up and find out what happened.

So the best thing you can do is try to teach your baby to fall asleep where she is going to stay asleep, by herself (not alone, necessarily, but without input from you). As she’s so tiny, you’re right that crying methods aren’t really appropriate, but you could try to gradually reduce your input over time. So at the moment she falls asleep rocking. To reduce your input you would start by rocking less, then just holding her, then sit next to the cot and stroke her, then sit next to the cot, then in the room, until she can fall asleep by herself. Picking her up if she gets upset, but always putting her back down to fall asleep in the cot. It could take quite a while, so you have to be persistent with it. You could also introduce (if you haven’t already) sleep cues like a sleep routine/song/white noise/comforter etc so that she associates these things with sleep so that when things are changing (rocking etc) she has some constant (independent) sleep cues.

I’d guess this is the 4 month sleep regression; it’s awful but it does pass so I’d try and ride it out. The advice is to wait until 6 months for sleep training.