Please be kind — I know everyone has different opinions on baby sleep. Apologies for such a big explanation , just trying to paint a picture of our approach so far to find advice that fits. I’m really hoping for advice from people who’ve had a similar approach to me (contact naps, co-sleeping/bedsharing, baby falling asleep at the boob). I don’t need negativity or judgement from people who’ve chosen to do things differently — just kind advice if you’ve been where I’m at. A first time mum here doing what she thinks is best and what she’s been taught, also feeling abit low these days anyway and have spoken to health visitor about this, so defiantly don’t need any nasty judgmental comments please, just doing my best !
My little girl is 19 weeks today — so about 4½ months depending how you count it 🤣 Up until now I’ve actually felt really confident with how we’ve handled sleep. Health visitors etc have always said she’s thriving and we’ve been praised for how responsive we are.
From newborn, she slept in next to me most of the night. Early mornings she’d often end up sleeping on me because she was quite up and down. Daytime has mostly been contact naps, with the odd Moses basket nap when she was tiny. Over time she’s definitely developed a strong preference for contact naps and now naps on me in the day, which honestly we both love. For maybe the last 6 weeks we’ve basically bedshared most the night, sometimes the initial sleep she’d have her own bed, now I just put her onto my bed and we sleep together. All works fine for us up until recently.
She’s exclusively breastfed and 9 times out of 10 falls asleep at the boob for naps and bedtime. During the night we had actually got into quite a good rhythm — not every wake was fed back to sleep. Sometimes she’d just have a cuddle and go back down, and I’d only refeed if she seemed genuinely hungry and wouldn’t settle otherwise.
Then we hit what I assume is the 4-month sleep regression.
A couple of weeks ago she had a phase of waking for 2 hours in the night, wide awake, which was tiring but manageable. Now it’s different — she’s waking almost hourly, her sleep cycles are so short and she’s very hard to transfer off me. The last few nights I’ve barely slept. As soon as I put her down she wakes.
Most advice I’m reading seems to centre around sleep training and teaching them to self-settle. I haven’t wanted to go down that route this early. I’m happy with contact naps and we are currently bed sharing (done safely, and I’ve had proper guidance on safe sleep). I don’t feel desperate to stop feeding to sleep either — it’s worked beautifully for us until now.
But I also can’t function on this level of broken sleep.
If you’ve been where I am right now and have any kind advice that helped you, or just want to share your experience, I’d really appreciate it because I feel a bit stuck at the moment. Is this just what regression looks like — very up and down, frequent wakes, sometimes baby wide awake for a stretch in the middle of the night, bedtime suddenly taking much longer? Is this all normal 4-month regression stuff?
Please be gentle — I’m just trying to understand what’s typical and how to find a way through.