4 months, no deep sleep

[Gemskiola]

I was wondering if anyone else has experiences this/got any advice. My son is 4.5 months old and seems to have been going through the regression for the past 5 weeks! 😩 It seems that he now never reaches a deep sleep like he used to. Last night I did his routine (bath, massage and a feed) and he fell asleep. This took about 1.5 hours. I was in a dark room etc. He was asleep on me for over 20 minutes. I manage to get him into his bassinet but he wakes up after only 20 minutes. This seems to be the rest of the night. He nurses, falls asleep, sometimes makes it to the bassinet, other times wakes before I can put him down. I’ve tried waiting longer, sometimes up to 45 minutes but he never seems to reach that deep sleep anymore. My husband and I have to carry out ‘shifts’ to look after our son because neither of us would get sleep otherwise. We have done this since he was born and I would love to be able to go to bed with my husband again. Also, the sleep debt is killing us.
Side note- my son is also suspected of having a milk allergy. He is mainly breastfed but does have some formula (2 bottles on dads shift) He has Apatamil pepti at the moment, he is better but not 100% -has anyone has experience with sleep
Improving after being on an amino acid based formula?

Hi,

I can’t remember about the sleep regression, but I think they need to learn to link sleep cycles? I can’t quite remember though I’m sorry.

For the CMPA - my DS had it (although he was fully formula fed from 6 weeks and on neocate from 10 weeks). We noticed no difference in his sleep. Unfortunately he didn’t sleep through until he was 2, but from about 6mo on he would do some decent stretches iirc.

The central problem here is caused by the fact that baby is being put down after going to sleep.

It becomes increasingly important from 4 months onwards that baby starts to go to sleep where they stay asleep. So getting baby to sleep in your arms and then attempting to put him down is never going to work in the long term.

You're at a crossroads, whereby you need to decide which path youre aiming for:

• ATTACHMENT PARENTING STYLE.

This means you are your baby's comfort. You carry on getting baby to sleep in your arms (feeding to sleep, rocking to sleep and so on) and move that forward by either contact naps (ie baby stays asleep in your arms) or cosleeping, so the cuddling to sleep continues.

• INDEPENDANT SLEEP

This means teaching your baby to go to sleep independently (ie on the surface they will stay asleep, not in your arms) and stays there to sleep. This need not mean lots of crying if you are happy with the use of tools for independent sleep - dummy instead of feeding to sleep, bouncy chair/pushchair for daytime naps is movement needed. It is not just a case of "put baby down and fingers crossed" either, learning to sleep independently is a journey that takes time.

TLDR: Your baby needs to stay asleep in your arms if going to sleep there. If you want crib naps, he needs to fall asleep in there.