4 month old waking hourly

[kathrynv]

Hi, my 4 month old baby has never been a great sleeper, but he did get to the stage where he was able to sleep for 6 hours at a stretch at night followed by a couple of 3 hour stretches. However, in the last 3 weeks he has started waking up almost hourly. My first thought was 'maybe he's ready for introducing solids', but I don't think he's particularly hungry and tends to fall back to sleep after a few sucks (I'm breastfeeding). I also think maybe he's woken up and just wants to be breastfed back to sleep for reassurance.. but the thing is he can settle himself because if I just ignore him, after 10 minutes of grumbling (not upset crying) he goes back to sleep by himself - only to wake again an hour (or less) later.

He goes to bed at about 7.30pm and gets up at 7ish am, but then he's so unrested he needs a nap about an hour after getting up and I'm shattered too. Any tips?

They have a growth spurt at 4 months which is often confused with a need to start solids. How long has this been going on?

It's classic growth spurt time, so I'd keep feeding and hope it passes soon - good luck

When he wakes, is he actually crying properly, or just having a mooch around and squeaking? Sounds horrid, but have you tried leaving him? Sometimes they just have a snuffle around and go back to sleep. My 8mo even wakes and cries really loudly for a couple of minutes and then goes off again. I only realised she'd go back to sleep when I tried leaving her for more than a couple of minutes. I think teething pain sometimes makes her cry out, but she just needs to go back to sleep and actually gets more upset if I go in and disturb her.

By going in and letting him have a comfort suck, rather than a proper feed, you're really only reinforcing the waking habit and you could find that a couple of sucks turns into wanting to wake up and play.

If you're absolutely sure that he's not hungry, wet, dirty or in pain, then try leaving him for a bit to settle on his own. It's very important for babies to be able to go through the cycle of deep to light sleep without needing your assistance to get back to sleep if they "surface" a bit during light sleep.

BTW - at the four month "growth spurt" stage, you could try feeding him up and offering the breast more frequently before bedtime, to see if that helps. Hourly, sounds more like a waking habit to me though. Sleep cycles are approximately 45 mins to an hour in babies.

Thanks for so many quick responses.

It started happening about 3 weeks ago (following a sicky bug we all had).

Twelveyeargap - I do leave him sometimes and he does settle himself after 10 mins or so of grumbling, but then after 3 or 4 hours of him waking up every hour or less I start thinking maybe he really IS hungry, so I offer him breast and sometimes he eats, sometimes he just falls back to sleep but then he still wakes up about an hour after whetehr he's eaten or not. It's really unpredictable!

Also, he's still in the same room as us (cot next to bed) so I'm not sure whether we disturb him, but I'm not ready to move him into his own room yet!

Hmmm. You could be disturbing each other. If he was in his own room, you'd probably sleep through a lot of the grumbling and only wake when he really cried.

You might just have to grin and bear it for a while, but letting him wake and fall back asleep on his own is good. It's just a pain for you if you're waking too.