17 week old waking every 2 hours

[Pickle50]

I posted when my DS was 10 weeks and found the advice super helpful so I’m back again - Im a desperate mum :(

From early on my DS never slept well, waking up every 1-2 hours per night until he was 12 weeks. He then started sleeping for a 3 hour stretch followed by a couple of 1 hour stretches till 5am. At 15 weeks he slept for 6 hours for the whole week. Bliss.

He is now 17 weeks and the last 10 days has seen him resort to being a little gremlin. It takes me 2 hours to settle him and then he’s up every 90 mins. When he was a newborn he slept in the day (on me) so I could at least rest but now he needs my constant attention and interaction and isn’t a good napper- he doesn’t follow wake
windows at all and is up for at least 2.5 hours at a time. Whilst I LOVE playing with him I'm finding it torturous with such little sleep.

I've heard of the regression around now. Can anyone offer any pearls of wisdom
to keep me going?

Sorry - forgot to say thank you xxx

Hi op I'm sorry if this is a bad suggestion my dd hated being swaddled I switched to sleeping bags and she immediately slept more if your Ds is already in a sleeping bag have you tried switching to swaddle

please don’t apologise, every suggestion is welcome!
He's started to roll on to his side so we’ve stopped swaddling and have put him in a sleep bag. Slept great initially but the past 2 weeks have been a nightmare.
We have a bedtime routine where he has baby massage, changed into pyjamas and bag, story and bedtime bottle and then down. Was working from about 12-15 weeks and then seemed to change overnight! I’ve no idea if this is normal. Feeling a bit hopeless and not a very good mum :(

It's completely normal. 4th month sleep regression. Total bastard.

Is he self settling? I.e falling asleep on his own. That's the first step.

Play very loud white noise when he wakes up and give him a few minutes to self settle rather than go to him straight away.

NC for this as I’ve told a few people IRL about my son’s sleep habits and don’t want it linked with other posts!

I have an 18 week old and don’t necessarily have a lot of advice, but perhaps reassurance..? I think sleep regression hit my LO a little before 4 months in the form of not being able to settle for a nap at all. Like you I was exhausted - he would be awake for hours and hours on end. Sometimes he would go down only to wake up 10 minutes later. I told people he was just too alert and interested in the world to nap. We tried having more of a nap routine like we do at bedtime - sleeping bag, story etc, which maybe helped a bit, but I think the main thing that’s helped…? Time! Just in the last week or so he’s been getting sleepy after 90 mins or so and dropping off more easily. He also fell asleep on his play mat the other day!! A friend’s little girl does this regularly and I thought it would be impossible for my DS to fall asleep in a bright room without being rocked/sung to. But the other day he just lay there and gradually closed his eyes. Absolutely mad. I cannot overstate how impossible I thought that would be just a few days ago!

I appreciate this doesn’t help you much right now in terms of practical help, but try to remember that everything is a phase and he may surprise the hell out of you next week by changing things up again..!

Hang in there!

Thank you, that’s the sort of reassurance I needed! I think it’s so bloody hard because not only am I exhausted but I feel like I’m doing something wrong. I’m a FTM and pretty anxious 😂
I keep reading things about how from this point sleep can be affected negatively for many years and it’s horrible! I know my DS isn’t the worst sleeper by any means (my friends baby woke up every hour for 2 years!) but I just feel helpless at times.

Wnikat- it is a total bastard! I do have a white noise machine but I have varying levels of success. Sometimes it soothes him, other times he won’t close his eyes till it’s turned off! Babies are tricky customers

thank you all xx

Another anxious FTM here! The amount of information out there is so unhelpful sometimes. So many things to feel guilty about.

Think about it this way though - if lack of sleep as an infant were that hugely damaging, then over millions of years natural selection would mean that only the genes of “good sleepers” won out! I’m not a scientist so can’t articulate that very well but hopefully you know what I mean! As it is, despite years of evolution, most babies still go through a phase of waking every few hours, and that’s because it’s biologically normal for them to do that - it’s an inbuilt safety mechanism to check their surroundings. They just need to learn how to settle back to sleep themselves and there is nothing you could have done as his mum to stop this phase happening.

Be kind to yourself!