Almost 4 month old screaming at bedtime

[Quickdraw23]

Hi folks, can anyone help or has anyone experienced this?

our EBF nearly 4 month old has started to get absolutely beside himself by 6:30pm everyday. It’s like a switch flips, he goes from happy to distraught so quickly.

the background is he has been sleeping pretty well from around 7:30-8pm till 6:30am with two wakes for feeds for the last 4 weeks ish. I’ve been feeding him to sleep without any anguish until the last week, and have done this successfully with both breastfeeding and with a bottle of expressed milk. (He has also has accepted expressed milk from a bottle quite happily.) Once he is asleep he tends to stay asleep until the first night feed, and he’s quickly back asleep again after that.

he fights naps in the day tooth and nail, and I can only get 30-45 min naps in the pram or sling 3 times a day. I’ve been trying especially hard to make sure one of these is between 4-5pm, because I thought the distress was to do with being overtired, but this doesn’t seemed to have helped much 😔 previously he was pretty happy until 7pm so we’ve been starting bedtime around that time, and we moved it to 6:30pm the last two nights because he started getting upset around that time, so we thought he needed to go up earlier. That hasn’t helped either.

the only way I have been able settle him when he is like this is with a breastfeed, despite my partners best efforts with a bottle of expressed. Im worried no one else will ever be able to get him to bed 😔

its almost like we are back at the newborn witching hour.

has anyone experienced this, or have any advice?! It’s awful hearing the cry, he sounds so distressed. My partner is encouraging me to go out to an evening thing next week and said she will bedtime with expressed milk, but at the moment it looks like it’s going to be horrendous for both of them.

Don't go out. He needs you right now. If he settles with a breastfeed then just do that, he needs you for comfort and it's not forever. Right now your partner needs to put her ego aside and accept that it's not even and you are the one that he needs. I'd say that last nap is very late to then expect him to go to sleep so early. If he gets tetchy I'd just feed to sleep or if he's too wound up have a bath with him (keep him shoulder deep in the water though so he doesn't get cold).

Despite being upset at bedtime when he does go down is he still sleeping the same through the night as he was?

Yry not to let it work you up, they change so often and he will more than likely change habits again in a few days. Try not to panic about next week, personally i would still go out, there’s no reason not to and for your own MH. Maybe this week try let your partner do bedtime, and you go out to the shop or something, not far away and see how it goes. If your in the house and let him do it you’ll get stressed and instinct will be to take over as a mum we just want to settle our baby. So nip out for an hour, close to home so you can get back if he rings🤣 it might just give you the reassurance you need to go out next week and that it will all be fine.

I have a 3m old too and he seems to changing every other day at the minute and then going back! Sometimes an early bedtime stops the upset, others it absolutely doesn’t, it’s a minefield atm haha!

Both of my sisters children did this. They were unable to put their babies to bed without hysteria. They wanted to be held at night. The minute they were put back in their cot they screamed the place down. They needed the comfort and warmth of their mothers.

Thank you very much for your replies everyone. I went to the pub on the corner for 30 mins and was called back because he just wouldn’t settle, and he was asleep within 5 mins of me being back. We’ve both agreed that it is likely he just needs me at the moment and this is something we revisit in a month or two.

@Springadorable i appreciate your reply thanks. I would like to add that my partners desire to do bedtime only comes from wanting to support me to do something out of the house in the evening as a one off, not from ego. We’ve both agreed that if it’s not working and it’s me he needs, I won’t be going. He seems to enjoy sleeping in the sling during the day with her, but clearly that doesn’t translate to bedtime. We did use to have bath time as part of the bedtime routine, which he loves, but he hates getting out so we stopped 😂 perhaps another thing to revisit a little later. Ive noted what you said about the nap being too late in the day - its so confusing with conflicting info about age appropriate wake windows and such, i had worried he was awake too long at the end of the day, but perhaps not!

@AmberM223 thanks so much for your reply! Yes you’re right, at this age they do change week to week. I think we will just see how he is this week and go from there.

@Gettingbysomehow it’s helpful to know that others have experienced this. How was it as the babies got older? For us it’s just the lead in to bed time - once he is asleep he sleeps soundly in his cot, which is in our room but not attached to our bed, for most of the night, and when he wakes he doesn’t cry, he just chats away until I wake up and feed him again, which is why the lead in to bedtime being so fraught feels like such a juxtaposition!

@AmberM223 and yes to your first question, he still sleeps through pretty well - from about 8pm, wakes up at 1amish and 4amish for feeds but isn’t hard to get back down and goes through til between 6-7am. I consider this pretty good for a 3.5 month old!

Hi OP. My (third) baby is 5mo and EBF. He’s generally the most placid baby I’ve ever encountered, but even he prefers me at bedtime. He will settle for dad/grandma for naps in the day, but as he gets more tired he is more resistant to this for his last nap and at bedtime - conks out for me but fights it with them and then gets tired and cranky. My first and, especially, second babies were very similar. They are now two and four and the needing-me-to-sleep thing is a distant memory, so I’m happy to just go with what the littlest one needs now in the knowledge it won’t last long. It sounds like you and your partner are being pragmatic and will get through this phase.

@Quickdraw23 Yes i would say that is good!! so thats a positive his night sleep hasn’t been disturbed because let’s face it we would all rather have a tricky bedtime than be up all night🤣 i know easier said than done but see how the next few days goes, this time next week he might be completely different! Just maybe keep persisting with bedtime and your partner helping, don’t just do it all yourself so he never gets used to your partner doing anything. Sounds like your both doing a fab job 🥰

@Pinkwhiteblue thank you very much for sharing, your post was very encouraging. It’s so helpful to know that this is normal baby behaviour and not something I have caused or done wrong! Out of interest, did you do anything in particular for your older two, or did their needs around bedtime just change naturally as they got older?

@AmberM223 thanks again for your kind words, very encouraging! Im very lucky with my partner, she has worked her arse off since our little boy arrived. We had such difficulty with feeding at the beginning, there’s no way we would be breastfeeding now without everything that she did to support in the early weeks. All the best to you and your little baby as well, wishing you lots of good sleep ☺️