Help! 18 week old stopped sleeping at night

[Agoo23]

Hi, I wondered if anyone could give me some advice! My 18 week old started sleeping through the night from 10 weeks, bedtime at 7pm. We’d do the same routine each night bath, bottle, bed. When putting him down awake we would do so without a dummy and while he was awake and he would take himself off to sleep within a couple of minutes and we wouldn’t hear from him until 6am.

Then when he hit 16 weeks literally like a light switch, he suddenly stopped sleeping through and was waking/unsettling what felt like at the end of every sleep cycle. That lasted 5 days before like the switch went back on and he slept through for the next 3 days. But now about two weeks on he seems to have settled in to a routine of waking at 10pm-ish every night and requiring settling with a dummy or rocking back to sleep and then again at 3am and 5am.

Routine is still the same. He’s now formula fed (as of 16 weeks) having been combi since 4 weeks. He’s a great eater, always has been so no concerns there clearing 8oz feeds consistently. He naps three times a day. Usually between 4-5hrs daytime sleep.

Very conflicting advice online so wondered if anyone has experienced anything similar? Is this a phase or is that wishful thinking?

Thanks I’m advance

My LO didn't sleep through the night consistently until 18 months and at 16 weeks you could be right in the middle of the four month regression. I found that whenever we felt like we had gotten into a routine something came along and we were back to night wakenings - teething, immunisations, growth spurt so requiring feeds through the night, viruses etc. Sometimes they just want you aswell, it's hard now but when they stop needing you in the night and you look back it feels like it all happened very quickly!

Yes it is a phase, in that everything is a phase with babies as they're always changing and developing. He's just hit the four month sleep regression. Look it up for more information, but basically it's a big shift in the way babies sleep and their sleep cycles become more adult like. This normally makes their sleep worse and can last for some time. In the scheme of things a 4 month old only waking 3 times per night is pretty good so I wouldn't complain. With my son at that age it wouldn't have even been possible to count how many times he woke up per night it was that many.

I could have written this post myself, DD is 18 weeks too and is exactly the same, her sleep now is worse than it ever was when she was a newborn, I'm assuming the 4 month sleep regression which is very common, I'm pretty sure my eldest was the same but it's all a bit of a sleepless blur lol. She's also started rolling from front to back so does that all night long but hasn't figured out how to get back yet so wakes herself up and freaks out, waking the whole house up until I turn her and settle her off again, rinse and repeat (hourly last night).