Hello - FTM with a possibly very stupid question. Can the four month sleep regression happen when the baby is actually only 3 months old, and before the baby starts trying to roll and roll at night, or are they always linked?
Our DS is just over 17 weeks now and has been a terrible sleeper since birth. He never slept more than a couple of hours, usually on us and it was always very difficult to get him to go to sleep - he always needed lots of help, even for naps and even when he was tiny, being rocked, swaddled etc, for hours and a few weeks ago he got even worse: he would sleep for 25 mins at night then cry for 45 mins all through the night which nearly killed us, and even in the sling it would take him nearly an hour to drop off, despite being clearly exhausted and ‘ready’ for sleep according to his wake windows. In the last week though he has transformed; he’s sleeping longer at night and he’s often managing to self settle as part of that if he wakes up. We’ve taken him out of his swaddle and he now usually puts himself to sleep chewing his hands, and is finally going down for naps without a fight.
As these last months have been so tough I have been really worrying about how on earth we’ll cope with the four month regression - but is there any chance that we’ve had it early and not realised because his sleep was so bad there wasn’t anything much to regress from?! I always thought it only happened when they started to roll, and he actually rolled for the first time when he was less than 3 months old and can hold himself up really well now, although he hasn’t tried rolling at night.