Dad needing help - my little 4 month old daughter won't sleep

[daddym]

Hello - am a first time dad needing help - my little 4 month old daughter won't sleep for more than 20 mins during the day (thankfully she still sleeps at night...just). She is cranky and whinging. It is driving my wife (&I) bonkers. We have tried lullabys, nap routines, pram walks, cars - please any tips.

This is such a difficult problem but one that alot of parents experience! Have you tried swaddling your daughter? Sometimes it helps them feel more secure. Also, most babies tend to get tired about 2 hours after they wake so it might be an idea to try getting her ready for nap just before the 2 hour mark. Take her into a dimly lit room with no noise or distraction. Make sure she has gotten wind up as this can unsettle them. With my ds, gently stroking his forehead would send him off to sleep, so that might be worth a try. My dd (5 months) sleeps best when I lay down with her to sleep which would be good as it would mean your wife would get a bit of a rest too. Don't worry to much about getting her into bad habits at this stage. Do whatever works for you and your wife and your dd. Does she take a dummy? Sometimes that can help soothe them off to sleep too. My dd is getting cranky now, so got to go. Hope some of that helps xxx

Thanks TOK for your tips - will definitly try swaddling - not sure how this is done - worried about making it too tight! Do the arms go by the side? Across the chest? Will have to do some research. She does take a dummy but she often spits it out! Good luck with yours.

Just to say, mine did this and it got better on its own eventually (at about 5.5months). Does your daughter fall asleep in your arms or on her own? Often if they can learn to do it themselves they are better at staying asleep longer.

Also, as TOK says - mine always slept longer if he wasn't too tired to start with - try putting her down for a nap much earlier than you think is necessary and see what happens. At that age, mine needed a nap after only being up for one hour in the morning!

Swaddling is great - get a Miracle Blanket, they're fab!

Have you tried putting her in a sling a letting her sleep there?

Our world's best buy ever was a wind up baby swing (you can get battery ones but they go through hundreds of the blimming things!.

The rocking motion helped DS dop off to sleep and as we could keep winding it up he stayed asleep for a while. The seat could be reclined so he was lying down and very comfy.

White noise (hoover, washing machine, 'wave' sounds) can also help. Good luck!

Also, don't 'tiptoe' around her when she is asleep - keep background noise quieter but not silent so she gets used to some noise. DS is 4 now and could sleep through an earthquake. He fell asleep at a Sikh wedding underneath speakes blasting banghra music!

The 2 hour thing was a revelation for me - I think I had been missing the early signs of tiredness with my DS and by the time he was rubbing his eyes it was too late to get him to settle easily.

So at about 4mo I started with a loose routine - so if he was up at 7am i'd put him down for nap at 9am, he'd wake around 10am, so down for nap around noon, then up about 1.30-2.30 depending on how successful nap was, and then short sleep somewhere around 4-5 and then bedtime at 7ish. My DS kept an afternoon nap until he was about 5-6mo only, but the morning/lunch pattern kept hold until he was about 13 months.

Routine, routine, routine is very important - decide what you are going to do and stick with it for a few weeks and you'll start to see that your DD will recognise the cues for sleep from the things that you do before her naps. So if it doesn't work straight away don't chop and change but stick with it for a while longer.

As part of our routine, we did grobag, special soft toy only for naps, and one lullaby that I only used at nap times. this gradually worked and even now at 2yo it is the one song I can use to really settle him, and he asks for grobag and toy himself.

There's a book I found useful which has sleep problems trouble shooter tips. Its called Sleep Sense. Its under £10 on Amazon and if I remember correctly you can look through parts of it before buying too. I used it to establish sleeping patterns both during the day and the night and have referred to it every time my daughters pattern has changed with age. Might just be my best baby buy ever Good luck!

Exactly the same routine as megonthemoon here, except for lullaby substitute book, and dd would never take the late-afternoon nap in the cot for some reason, so that used to be in the buggy. She also grabs for her sleep-only cuddly toy when she's tired. Also, just as mistressploppy says, the catnapping can sort itself out - dd used to always wake after exactly 30 minutes (it was so frustrating), and at around 5 months, this lengthened. She's a year old now and still takes a morning nap - (yesterday's went on for 2.5 hours(!) - if you'd told me that would happen 6 months ago I would have said you were mad).

Swaddling never worked for us, nor did a dummy, but I know both can do wonders. It's a bit of trial and error, but it really does pass, this phase.

I know I'm not saying anything different from anyone else here, but just thought it might be useful to have another confirmation that at least some of these things are bound to work for you. At four months, dd wouldn't sleep more than 45 mins at night for a few weeks, either, it was a nightmare - we thought we'd never get through it. We sleep trained her using pick-up, put-down from the Baby Whisperer, and since 6 months, without fail unless she is ill or teething, she sleeps through 11-13 hours at night and takes good naps. Good luck!

Thanks very much everyone - we will have to investigate all of those ideas - some (hopefully!) really helpful ones there. It seems like swaddling/sling would be a good place to start. Her feeding routine is pretty consistent it is just trying to get her to sleep in between, If she won't go to sleep do you get her up or leave her until she does go to sleep/it is feeding time?

What helped us was trying to remember the rough two hours thing, as other posters have said. Also a vibrating bouncy chair this sort of thing.

Lastly some sort of relaxing music that is a sleep cue. here. It won't work straight away but after a little will hopefully the baby will associate it with falling asleep and when it hears it - will go 'aha!, naptime.' At first we had to spend a LONG time getting dd down, but after a week or so with the vibrating chair and music she started to get the idea.

Lastly, our DD never got the long nap thing. EVER. It's worth remembering that they won't all sleep for 2 hours at a time, and as long as they are getting 45/60 minutes a couple of times a day then they will survive. We used to use the music etc for the morning nap, and then we were usually out in the car or pushchair over lunchtime and that used to work then. It took her until she was over a year until she slept in the pushchair without fairly constant movement though - at least it was good for losing the baby weight....

I think if you get the timing of the sleep right, they tend to go off within 15 mins. I wouldn't get her up unless she is unhappy as you will be giving her quiet time and she may go off. I second the sling. We have a hug-a-bub, bit like a kari-me and both of mine used to go off very quickly when tired/windy if carried in a tummy-to-tummy position for a little walk.

good luck, it is so difficult to even think of solutions when you are tired! I have found the dr ferber sleep book really helpful in understanding about babies (and adult) sleep patterns.

The miracle blanket from mothercare is great but if you don't want to fork out the money for it, here is how we swaddle-I hope I can explain it well!

Lay the blanket out and place your dd a quarter of the way in. Place her right arm over her chest then lift the left side of the blanket over her chest and tuck it around her back, then repeat with the left side, so there should be enough blanket to wrap around her back so that she is lying on it. You do not need to wrap it around her too tight, small movements won't wake her up. Make sure you think about what she is wearing so that she doesn't over heat. A sleeveless bodysuit and light cotton babygrow/sleepsuit should be enough.

xxx

i'd forgotten about that LD! DS was a nightmare from 4-7 mo. Now I know why. He used to wake every 2 hours.

hi op.

i have just seen swaddle blankets in TK maxx for about £7 - bargain! the reasin they can work is that they prevent the moro (sic) reflex (where they fling their arms outward) waking them up.

the 2 hour sleep thing is a good place to start but also my lifesaver was watching for sleep cues. i read it in baby whisperer (though i ignored most of the book). what you do is watch for the baby rubbing eyes, yawning, thumb sucking etc and try and get them down straight away. doing this got me at least two decent lengths naps out of dd (now 6 months).

also recommend 'wonder weeks' if you don't want to buy the book you can get the gist of it here

I had one like this. I ended up carrying her around everywhere in a sling, then a carrier, then a back carrier. She was inconsolable without me and nothing else worked. She was very sensitive to sound and would wake at the drop of a pin. She also hated motion like swinging, and going anywhere in the car drove her bananas. The only other thing that I recall working was leaving her in her car seat (I had one that could be taken out of the car) and setting her down outdoors under the big tree in the garden, so she could look up through the leaves at the changing light patterns, which fascinated her. She was happy to spend a little time in it in the kitchen watching me work occasionally too.

She improved a bit when she started crawling, but that brought its own set of problems, as she was insatiably curious and into climbing.

wow - there are so many parents who have such similar problems (and some much worse), had never even heard of sleep regression! Thanks for the links, got a lullaby CD and some books on the way! You are right mistressploppy she will look really sleepy in our arms and as soon as shes down, shes wide awake and she'll start kicking, then whinging and then when we go to pick her up you'll get a big smile (are babies that clever/manipulative?)If we leave her she gets all worked up and cries and takes ages to settle. But worse still if she does go to sleep she can't break the 20-40min cycle. Hope its just a 'phase' and we are over thinking it.

Not manipulative. Don't go down that road. There's really no way a baby is manipulating in any way, nor is responding to cries 'giving in' or a sign of weakness on anyone's part.

My DD3 who never slept (see above) -- and who didn't manage to sleep through the night until 2.5 yo, is delightful now, age 11, and has been for years. She never, ever slept in her cot. The instant she touched the sheets she was wide awake and screaming her lungs out. Things got better when she was somewhere between 3 and 4, sleepwise, and in terms of generally being able to relax and not be so intense about everything. She never took a reasonable daytime nap and I gave up trying to have her take one before she was 2. She sometimes collapsed from sheer wearing herself (and everyone else) out somewhere around 4 PM.

I have a 2 year old who is becoming manipulative about bedtime/naps and so we are firm with him now, but until very recently there was no way his brain was well wired enough to think through how to manipulate us. So please please don't start to think that - or listen to anyone who says that your DD is manipulating you! They aren't capable at such a young age. She just gets sleepy in your arms because it's warm and cosy, and she can probably hear your heartbeat which is comforting, and then she is suddenly plonked in her cot which is all cold and hard in comparison. So she gets upset and grumpy, but when you return she smiles as she knows that you are much nicer than her cot

Think of it a bit like you dozing off on the sofa late in the evening. It's all cosy and nice and you drift off while the telly is on, and then the next thing you know your DW is waking you up to say "it's midnight and time you were in bed" and you get all grumpy and crotchety for having been woken up. When actually if you had recognised that you were tired and got up to bed before you dozed off you wouldn't have had the grumpy/crotchety phase and could just drift off happily for a nice long sleep. This scenario happens in my house every night with DH, and boy is he grumpy when I wake him to tell him to get to bed...

Anyway because your daughter can't say she's tired, you need to look out for the signs and get her into her cot before she gets too sleepy so that she can drift off happily rather than having to feel all grumpy and crotchety at having been woken up.

at this age I think dd2 could mostly only manage 1.5 hours awake. She would get grumpy, rub her her eyes etc generally when getting tired. I would get her into bed as soon as she was showing signs of tiredness (or take her out in the pushchair).
Even so at this stage she wouldn't have long naps-generally 40 mins max, sometimes less... 4 times a day, reducing to 3 naps a day as she was able to stay awake longer...She would very randomly throw in a long nap (1.5 hours or so ) from time to time but I never knew why or how, and didn't start to take longer naps consistently until older than 7 months or so.

You have my sympathy, it's a difficult time. There were times when it seemed she really hadn't had enough sleep and woke up in a terrible mood-at these points the only thing I could do was go for a long walk with her. But hang in there, things always get better.