4 month old sleep regression - advice?

[aimeeeleanor]

Hello everybody :)

Just wondering if anybody had any advice for the following please

Son has just turned 4 months a matter of days ago (born 13th July - 1 week early). He has slept like an angel really since birth (he is breastfed as well as bottle fed using EBM & F)

He started sleeping 7-9 hours on a night from about 8 weeks & that went up to 11-12 hours from about 16 weeks. Goes to bed between 7.30-8.30pm

A few days before he turned 4 months he started to wake a couple of times during the night but managed to self settle back to sleep. He has then woken up & been unable to self settle from
about 4:30am onwards, but I can tell he’s still tired

Obviously I know this isn’t bad & people experience much worse, but he is a total grumpy pants now if he doesn’t have over 11 hours solid(ish) sleep at night, the little tinker. What steps do we take to deal with the early waking?

I have once or twice managed to shush him back to sleep, then the rest of the time I have put him on the breast & he’s fallen back to sleep on me. Or DH has taken him downstairs for a bottle & he’s fallen asleep after that, he doesn’t ever seem ravenous for the food though. Seems more for comfort

We don’t want to make a bad habit of getting him out of his cot to settle him if there’s a better way to deal with it. What do you all suggest please? Or is it just a case of dealing with the here & now & he should hopefully grow back into his longer sleep cycle?

thanks so much :)

Is he sleeping solidly without waking 8pm-4.30am?

If so, deal with this by adding in an 11pm feed. Lift baby at 11pm and aim to keep baby awake enough to do a full feed and nappy change. It's a way to re-start the night so that you then get (hopefully) a solid 8h from 11pm-7am ish.

His sleep structure is changing now and it won’t go back to what it was, physiologically, ever again. That doesn’t mean he won’t ever sleep again! But things will be a bit unpredictable for a while. I find the least stressful thing to do is… nothing. Take each night as it comes and don’t have expectations! Get him back to sleep however is the easiest and quickest way, so you get some more sleep too. He will grow out of it 🙂 although, and I don’t want to scare you but, it might not be until he’s closer to 1yo.

This is a good article about what to expect from baby sleep in the first 18 months: sarahockwell-smith.com/2017/07/24/the-rollercoaster-of-real-baby-sleep/