4 month regression at 3 months?

[MGee123]

Our daughter is nearly 14 weeks and over the last 2 weeks her night time sleeping seems to have got worse and worse. She was only waking once (or occasionally twice) for a feed and sleeping from 7/8 until 6 ish. I've lost count of how many times she has woken up tonight. Is this the 4 month regression rearing its head early? I can't think what else is causing it. Initially I thought it was a growth spurt but it seems to be lasting too long for that. She has been more fussy in the daytime as well - feeding more and a bit harder to settle at times.

At night when she wakes I try to settle her by popping her dummy back in and patting and shhh ing, sometimes picking her up and rocking if I know I haven't fed her that long ago. If this doesn't work I feed her (BF). One issue is once she's into the second half of the night where she's sleeping more lightly, she frequently spits her dummy out which sometimes wakes her up? I spend from 3 ish onwards almost constantly resettling her.

Daytime wise she has 4 naps which are mostly 30-45 minutes in length, although occasionally she will do 1-2 hours. No noticeable predictability to this. Wake windows I try to keep to max 90 mins. Naps are almost all in buggy, carrier, or sometimes car as we tend to be out a lot. She usually settles reasonably well for these with her dummy in the buggy but without it in carrier/car.

At night we get her changed into her sleep suit and sleeping bag, read story and then feed her (bottle of expressed milk). She will sometimes fall asleep while feeding or sometimes we put her dummy in and rock her to sleep. When asleep we transfer her to her moses basket which usually goes okay. All done upstairs in subdued light with minimal noise. First half of the night usually goes fairly well and she will sleep from 7/8 until 12/1 ish before feeding. Then it goes to pot!

Any suggestions welcomed. I am trying not to fixate on this too much and just accept it as a phase, but it just seems quite early to be hitting the regression and any pointers anyone has would be welcomed!

Could be teething? My 16 week old literally just popped her first tooth yesterday!

Our DS had the 4 month sleep regression before 4 months aswell.

I’m sure someone else will be along with better advice but I would say don’t worry too much. It passes in a few few weeks and gets much better on its own. It sounds like you’re doing really well with daytime naps aswell.

During this time when DS was waking up very frequently I would just breast feed him back to sleep straight away as it was the option that let me get back to sleep the fastest.

Now he’s a bit older (5months) he can go back down (sometimes) with just a cuddle from DH so I don’t see it as a bad habit at all.

The beginning of this regression is actually to do with leaving the Fourth Trimester. Since trimesters last 13/14 weeks, it usually starts around this age.

Thank you. I hadn't thought about teething @Inthesky42 - she is very dribbly and shoving hands in mouth but I think that's a developmental thing for this age too. Will keep an eye out!

Thank you @PinkPlantCase and @FATEdestiny for the reassurance. I suspect it is the regression starting. Hopefully it doesn't last too long!

That's exactly when it started for us. The timings are all approximate. Good luck!

I'm the same!! 13 weeks and out of nowhere gone from sleeping from 8/9pm-4am if not longer to waking 58282 times. Naps become horrible as well! I've read it doesn't pass and you need to teach them to self sooth/fall asleep on there own for sleep cycles? The biggest thing for me is the dummy 😫 let me know if anything works for you 🤞🏼🙏🏼

We seem to be coming out the other side of it already hopefully 🤞 back to waking once or twice at night (1 ish and 4 ish) and napping okay again. I just persisted with trying to settle her back to sleep when she woke and didn't change much. Some days she settled and others she didn't but we just tried to ride through it. I'm sure it will all go up the creek again in the future but for now it's back to being manageable! As a perk she is now sleeping 12 hours from when she settles, so a bit longer, and has started being able to self settle. We're going to keep practising this as it's easier at night than for naps in her basket.

"regressions" are a fairly new idea. All babies are different. I'd say don't worry about it and just go with the flow.

Oh amazing news!

@MGee123 Found your post as I'm going through the exact same thing that you initially described with my LO. Now that you're on the other side of it, do you have any tips? My daughter only naps for 30 minutes at a time and after around 1/2am she'll need settling multiple times. This has all really started since she turned 13 weeks 😩 I think it could be an early regression? She does keep sucking on her hands and dribble a lot too. Did your LO teethe early? X