4 month old

[MuddledUpAgain]

Hi all.

After some advice please! 4 month old (nearly 19 weeks) will not sleep in his cot. Wakes and screams as soon as we put him in until we pick him back up, when he immediately falls back to sleep.

We wait until he's in a deep sleep before we put him down and lower him in bum first, then rest of body. We occasionally get an hour but then he seems to realise he's not on someone and cries until he is. Making sleep for me and his dad very hard as obviously we can't sleep if he's on us. Many thanks in advance for any advice!

Has he always been like this? Or is it a recent thing? Their brain develops hugely at 4 months and they’re suddenly aware of their surroundings, and their sleep cycles. When before they’d just always be In a deep sleep, now they are aware of light and deep sleep; and will wake between cycles. He sounds exactly like my boy and What I’m about to say divide a room but I would try and deal with it for a couple more months and then try sleep training. So long as he’s content and healthy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try it, especially if in 2 months you’ll be at breaking point!

Hi. Thanks for your reply.

He's always been like it a little bit, but it's definitely got worse over the last 3 weeks. All the sleep info says he should be learning to link his sleep cycles but I can't see how if he won't go down.

You've kinda confirmed what I was thinking (and what my husband had suggested), so thank you.

I started co-sleeping with my now 1yo DD at around that age for exactly this reason. I didn't want to sleep train so carried on co-sleeping until she was around 8 months when I started trying to put her down in her cot for the first part of the night. To start with she only managed an hour but that quickly increased.

It's been up and down but she averages 3-4 hours before her first wake now. We still co-sleep the rest of the night when she probably feeds another 2 times on average but I can doze through that now. I'm going to try putting her back down in her cot after feeding back to sleep over the next couple of weeks and see how we get on.

Hi @MuddledUpAgain yeah that’s the
logic I had: they need to learn (or rather I wanted him learn!) how to fall asleep and stay asleep on his own. I wasn’t at breaking point at 4 months, but knew if I kept rocking him to sleep, boob in mouth I might be at my wits end months down the line. Not everyone feels this way though! I have some very good mummy friends who still love doing this at 17 months old. I’m def not like them though! I picked a night when he was happy and content, no tempertaure etc full tummy, clean nappy and I knew he was tired. Put him down. Kissed him good night. Walked out the door. He screamed the place down. Went back and forth for 45 mins and soon he was asleep. A lot of people think sleep training is bad for them, but he is so so attached to me, he loves me and I haven’t damaged him in anyway 😃