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Losing my mind - sleep regression or super fussy baby?

4 replies

kalicia · 30/09/2022 00:02

My baby is 14 weeks old. Apart from the newborn stage so has been an amazing sleeper. I swaddle her, give her a dummy, white noise then she will sleep from whatever time I put her down between 8pm-10pm, wake up for a feed around 4am then back to sleep for however long. I’ve been really lucky.
However recently she will not get in a deep sleep or sleep for longer than about an hour before waking up crying. She fights the swaddle so I bought a swaddle transition (the ones with her arms up). I used that for the past 5 days and it’s actually made her worse!
The issues I have observed are: she is VERY reliant on dummy, she will not sleep without it, including napping in the day, if it falls out and she’s not in a deep sleep she will let me know about it so I’m constantly putting it back in every 30 minutes.
She is not keen on the swaddle, it worked well for a while but as she’s getting older I wanted to transition from it. She had a bad startle reflex so that’s the reason I used it. But if she’s not swaddled (arms restricted) she has her hands on her face. It’s strange it’s some sort of comfort for her. She will have her eyes closed then stroking her face when ultimately knocks the dummy out.
I get to the point where I put her in my bed but once again I have to hold her hands to help her fall asleep because they seem to be the issue of keeping her awake.
2 days ago she actually screamed and cried the majority of the day. She woke up at 4am and did not go back to sleep. She was overtired and refused to sleep. It was horrible, she was inconsolable. all day was spent between me, my partner and mum trying to comfort her. She almost went 24 hours without sleep and so did i.
I feel like such a bad mum, I get angry and upset because I’m sleep deprived and also I feel like she’s taken such a step back because she was an amazing sleeper. I don’t know what to do😔

OP posts:
ChittyBang1987 · 30/09/2022 04:07

Sounds like it could be the dreaded 4 month sleep regression. Have a search for that.

My advice is next few days work on getting lo to sleep just to catch up on the sleep debt. Do what you can to do it. Whether that be contact napping or what not. I still remember that 4 month sleep regression.

GinnyBee · 30/09/2022 11:17

Yeah sounds like the 4 month regression. Just do whatever it takes to get some sleep for both of you, it will pass. It might take several weeks, but will pass.

naomisuissa · 30/09/2022 19:35

We got rid of the dummy at 4 months because we started experiencing similar issues to you. There were a few minutes of crying at various points over a few days but he very quickly learnt to self settle by sucking his fingers and from then on slept much better. We stopped swaddling at the same time.

MolliciousIntent · 30/09/2022 19:39

The dummy is making it worse not better, so ditch that, let her have her arms out and self sooth with her hands on her face.

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