4 month old waking every 45 minutes

[MotherOfDragon20]

My 4.5 month old daughter has been a great sleeper since about 6 weeks old she’s slept from 8pm-05-30am every night so I know she can (could?) link sleep cycles however for the past 3 weeks she has gone to bed at 8pm and will wake every night at 11pm and then every 45 minutes after that all night long, when she wakes I don’t pick her up just give her her dummy and hold her hand and she will fall back over but this goes on all night and I’m exhausted. She has one night feed about 3am and before then she will refuse a feed so it isn’t hunger waking her. I’m assuming this is the 4 month sleep regression but I’m not sure what I can do to improve things or if I need to just ride it out. I wouldn’t say we have a strict routine but our day roughly looks as follows:

07:00 wake
08:30 nap for 1.5 hours
10am wake
12am nap for 1.5 hours
13:30 wake
3pm quick pram nap 30 minutes

17:30 30 minute nap
20:00 bed

She goes down to bed awake with no problem and puts herself to sleep so she can self settle (at least at bed time). I don’t expect her to sleep through or even return to her previous sleep habits but right now even waking ever 2/3 hours would be a dream!

Sorry for the long post! Any advice on how to squeeze a little more sleep out of her would be great, thanks for reading.

Definitely sounds like the four month sleep regression to me! I'm afraid it is sort of a case of riding it out. The fact she can self settle is very promising, it shouldn't last TOO much longer.

Couple of things I'd noticed though -

1. id look at pushing that 3:30pm nap back a little then drop the fourth nap and bring bedtime earlier.

2. I'd think about ditching the dummy. We did at this age and it made a huge difference. We were having to put it back every hour and I just couldn't deal with it so went cold turkey.

3. when she wakes, don't do anything if she isn't just stirring, grumbling. Leave her to see if she'll settle without you. Obviously hold her hand etc if she cries.

And then... just lots of coffee and the hope it passes soon!

Thank you @hodgepodge21 definitely some things to think about! I would absolutely love to ditch the dummy, it is currently the bane of my existence but DD seems to be a very sucky baby and I really don’t think she would manage without endless screaming. I also feel a great deal of guilt about stopping bf quite early and think I would get very sad taking something off her that gives her so much comfort. How did you find going cold turkey?

It was a bit different for us as my DS wasn't that bothered about the dummy, it was me who really persevered with it because he had bad reflux and colic and used to calm him. So I don't think he really missed it. We probably had a few days of being more unsettled at night, me having to be a bit more hands on but then after that it was SO much better. But if your little one is more "sucky" it could make things harder in the short term.

Definitely 4 month regression, just a ride it out game, it does get easier I didn't really mind getting up to put the dummy back in but it was the awake for over an hour at a time bit playing with the dummy pulling it in and out that got me 😂
Dd was a brilliant sleeper before, like you we are set to a routine, happy to say at 6 months she's back to her normal sleep pattern so it doesn't last forever.
Lots of coffee for you!