4 month regression... Never ending..any ideas?

[SequinCola]

My DS is 5.5months. Until about 6 weeks ago he would reliably sleep 5hrs 10pm-3am and sometimes longer which was enough to keep us all rested.

The four month regression hit and he hasn't slept more than an hour day or night without some support for six weeks. During the day he will only nap for 30-40 mins unless in contact with me, and able to settle between sleep cycles by suckling (including in the pram or sling). At night he wakes every hour.

To start with my husband was able to resettle him but now he becomes hysterical until I intervene and put him to the boob. I don't feed to sleep for every nap, but I do feed to sleep at bedtime, although increasingly this isn't working and he's going into his crib awake and I'm staying with him singing and patting his tummy until he drifts off.

He's currently doing 3 or 4 naps per day depending on whether I elongate naps by staying with him.

He is also very distracted when feeding recently so have taken to feeding him in the darkened bedroom and I feel like I am spending all my time in the gloom, and everything is falling to me, he just won't settle for my husband.

This is our broad schedule:
6:30/7am - sleepy feed
7:30am - up
9:30am- 10:15am - nap
12noon-2pm - contact nap
4:15pm - 5pm - nap
7pm - bath (once DH finishes work and had had some time with him, ideally we will eat before then too)
7:30pm/8pm - bed

All of these timings can shift by up to half an hour and if we can't do the long contact nap then we end up with 4 naps which usually mean a slightly later bedtime.

What can we do? We're following sleepy cues with wake windows of around 2 hours, we have a bedtime routine, he's getting lots of floor time, fresh air, day light, no screens after his last nap and before bed. We've taken to bed sharing for part of the night so I can sleep but I don't want to do that forever.

I don't want to sleep train, and he's in our room for now anyway so it wouldn't be practical.

I feel like it's never going to end. Any ideas anyone?

So sorry I don’t have any practical advice but just wanted you to know you are heard, and I sympathise. My baby has been a horrendous sleeper too, around that time was particularly hard and she was up hourly too with crap naps in the day. You never get time to even catch your breath

The only thing that helped for us was taking the night in shifts but that’s really hard if baby will only settle for you. In the end we did sleep training using a method similar to the Lucy Wolfe stay and support approach (gradual retreat). Don’t know how that would work unless in a different room though.

It wasn’t without tears sadly, and hasn’t been a miracle fix. But it did dramatically improve things. We went from hourly wakings to sleeping 8 hours solid and then sometimes 9/10 hours, within about a week. There was crying but not CIO as we were with her.

But again not a miracle as we’ve now run into an 8 month regression 😩 but it’s still not as bad as it was thankfully.

Just wanted to send you sympathies and solidarity. Hope you get some rest soon x

(But I see you don’t want to sleep train and that’s totally understandable! Just sharing our experience)

Ah yes I think stay and support is a different thing - when I said sleep training I really meant cry it out/Ferber etc. We do try to settle him in the cot but not always successful.

I have Lucy Wolfe's book. I don't think it's a completely gentle approach but we might have to give it a go if things don't improve once we put him in his own room next month (I'd keep him with us but he's a big lad and the next to me will be full soon!!)

Following as we're currently experiencing similar with our 4 month old.
That sounds really hard OP, I hope things improve for you soon. I am holding onto the hope given by friends who say this is just a phase and it will pass eventually 🤞🏻

@sequincola I could have written this post myself! Currently over an hour and a quarter into lunchtime contact nap sigh
In the last few days my LO has been so restless since 4am too, she's been getting on and off sleep until 6am but I am now even more exhausted.
Same as you, sometimes I can resettle in the Next2me, so the first hour of this nap was in there with 1 resettle, but she just wouldn't resettle in there after 2nd sleep cycle. No idea how to improve things though we're hoping to get her in her own room at half term (fingers crossed!)
The other night I noticed she was awake on her monitor though, eyes wide open but quite still so left her to see what she did and she went back off to sleep in a few minutes which I was so proud of her for!
Hopefully it'll improve for both of us soon x

Oh good luck! At least we're not alone! He did three 1/2 hours last night 10pm - 1:30am... I stupidly didn't go to bed until 11:45 I'm just holding out hope that this might be the sign of things changing.

He's so cheerful and cute when he's awake (currently lying in the floor blowing raspberries and squeaking) I just have to hold on to that when it's 4am and I'm awake for the fourth time!!