Is the 4 month sleep regression inevitable?

[MumOfBoys16]

Tell me.. is the 4 month sleep regression always awful? Are there children it doesn't impact? ... and most importantly can I do anything before to prevent or lessen it? DS Blue 6 weeks now.

I had hoped not but so far we've had every textbook regression going ....
😭 she's a great sleeper otherwise though but when one hits its madness for a couple of weeks. 3/4/5 am wake ups for 45 mins each time. Thought I would go insane with them and lack of sleep.

However I would say re bottle feeding/breastfeeding, DD is breastfed and has had significantly better sleep than her 6/7 NCT bottle fed peers and her 2 Bottle fed same age cousins even despite her regressions (they too have had 4 month and 8-10 m regression! Maybe we were an unlucky bunch 😭) So not sure it's a rule of thumb.

I found white noise, a sleeping bag instead of blankets, blackout blinds have been our only saviours. But during those regressions nothing has worked bar teaching her to fall asleep alone which was a mix of pick up put down method and as she's gotten past 7/8 months 2-3 minutes of 'crying' (I say crying because it's actually her shouting and shambling around the cot then she sleeps!) if she's ever truly crying I just end up going in

Weirdly my DS starting sleeping really well at 4 months (he'd been a bad sleeper before that). We had 2 great months and then he regressed at 6 months instead and at 8 months still hasn't improved.

Meh. All these regressions and developmental 'leaps' to a set schedule are bunkum in my opinion, and I have two young children so I've raised babies in the era of all this sort of thing.

I believe that babies are definitely more restless/hard to settle etc etc at certain points in their development that makes sense and studies have shown this to be the case. But to ascribe that to a '4 months sleep regression' or 'at 15 weeks baby will be going through leap 6' just leads to self fulfilling prophecy. You're expecting that time to be awful because it's 'due' so it is.

Just catching up on all your replies.. Thank you.

@lonaLeg brilliant post.. so helpful. Great to know the consensus is it's not inevitable buy there are some changes. @whoslaughingnow73 I totally agree about all the leaps etc, I used to follow wonder weeks with my first but it made me so neurotic.. and when you think about it all other aspects of development happen at totally different times for different babies. I'm trying to go with the flow more with DS2 but remember how difficult the 4 month mark was.

Slightly shocked a sleep consultants only comment was to bottle feed 🙈