4 month regression

[Mariecurie2]

Hi some advice needed from you mum's out there. My little one just past 4 months has I believe gone into her 4 month sleep regression. I've read up on this and one of the main suggestions is getting baby to sleep on their own. My little one will not sleep if I just put her down. I leave her for ten minutes then she starts to cry. So here I am at 5am and she's wide awake and wants to play. Any tips on how I can encourage her to get herself back to sleep. Thanks.

Completely ignore that bad advice. There’s zero actual reason baby needs to go to sleep alone, the biological norm is for babies to need support to go to sleep for a long time yet. They are not developed enough to soothe themselves in any way (until about age 3) and they need your presence to feel calm and safe enough to sleep. A 4 month only simply cannot tell themselves they feel safe on their own.

Keep baby close, meet their need for comfort and security, safely bedsharing is a great way to get more sleep and follow your instincts rather than sleep advice mainly devised by men with no training in infant development.

Completely agree with @BuffaloCauliflower

Please ignore that advice, it won't be nice for you and baby to just leave them to self sooth until they are ready. You will also find it so stressful and will make bedtime awful.

I rocked DD to sleep until she got to about 7 months and she used to push me off when I tried to cuddle and wanted to be left in her cot. Since then, she has been put down awake but tired and will fall asleep on her own.

The four month regression is a developmental thing, it isn’t caused by anything you’ve done, some babies have it badly and some don’t. I followed all the advice about sleep once baby got to about this age and he self settled at bedtimes and nap times but still regularly woke 3 times in the nigjt and needed soothing anyway, he’s now 12 months and mostly only wakes once around 5am but it varies. And I know other people who have always rocked or fed to sleep whose babies slept through quite young. So who knows… the only reason to really strongly avoid feeding or rocking to sleep is if it doesn’t work for your lifestyle, for example if you need to go back to work when baby is still young or be away from baby at nap times or bedtimes.