Talk to me about the 4 month wakeful period

Taytee

And go fetch me a cup of coffee too. My "I've been STTN since 5 weeks old" baby is a mess. She was up from 2-5pm and wouldn't even go back to sleep at 7am like she normally would. I'm sure me slowing down BFing and more bottles doesn't help etiher BTW.

Yes, I've looked back at Kellymom and other online resources. I'm looking for those "this is what we did" kind of gems. We're doing the dim lights, no fun, little eye contact at night when she's supposed to be sleeping. We've always had a bedtime routine and we're going to try moving up her bedtime. She's been going down at 9, just after we get Abby to bed and was sleeping until 6-7am, nursing/bottle and then sleeping another 1-2 hours.

I remember Abby hitting this point but it was also when it was time to ditch the paci and the swaddle so we just tried CIO which worked beautifully in 2 days. I don't think Emily is that kind of baby. She spits out the paci within 2 minutes of falling asleep and doesn't fight the swaddle. She just wants to be awake and flirting and held. Bringing her to bed with me didn't help either. Believe me, I tried!

ali-1411

Ugh our 4 Month Wakeful was three months of utter hell until we did CIO around 7 months old.  I don't have any quick-fix tips but I feel your pain!

rssnlvr

Ours only lasted five weeks, but it was really rough going back to that newborn schedule when we both had to work all day! I can't think of anything you're not already trying. We would just keep the lights off, change her, feed her if she was hungry (about 70% of the time she would go back to sleep after eating...well, what I mean is 100% of the time she would go back to sleep after eating, but she was only hungry about 70% of the time), and shush/rock her back to sleep. Sometimes that meant one of us sleeping in the recliner in her room for an hour or two with her.

We started weaning from the swaddle around 4.5 months because we thought we might have to do some sleep training and I wanted her to have her hands free for thumb-sucking/self-soothing, but by the time we got her weaned off of it, she was back to sttn again.

Hang in there! 

m_and_m

That was around the time that H went from going to bed at 1opm to going to bed at 8pm. Prior to that earlier wasn't an option, and after that she could stay up if needed, but 8pm was much better.

We still swaddled, but she wouldn't take a paci starting at 4mos. Every time she woke up I'd nurse her back to sleep and it would be a 30 minute process to get her back to laying down anywhere but on me. Nurse to sleep, stop rocking, nurse a little more, stand up, nurse a little more, sway for awhile, delatch if she didn't do it on  her own, hold her against my body while I bent over to lay her in the bassinet, wait awhile, slowly extricate one arm, wait awhile, slowly remove the other arm, wait awhile, move my body away from hers half an inch or so at a time every time she took a breath, and eventually I could get back into my own bed.

Then at 5mos I figured out she slept great in her carseat (slightly inclined and very snug- my kid NEEDED snug, in addition to the miracle blanket), so she slept in that in her crib for a very, very long time. It was still a process to get her in there, but it would buy me up to 2 hours sometimes instead of 15-45 minutes. 

userdeleted

Ugh, we're just now coming out of it. Charlie went from only waking up once between bedtime (around 10 or 11p) to wake up time (around 7 or 8a), to falling asleep around like 6:30p and waking up four or five times between then and 5a, when he wanted to be awake.

We ended up pushing a third nap back into his schedule, around 4 or 5p. After that, I was able to make his bedtime later - around 8p, and he started sleeping until 7a again, though he still was waking up waaaay too much for my tastes in between. I don't really have any tips for that. We just kind of muddled through

MrsRegis

Ah. Sorry. That sucks! Been there. I really like the site askmoxie dot com. She writes a lot about sleep and then opens up the comments to parents. There are some really helpful tips in the comment section in addition to the content. 

I really think 4-6 months is the hardest for infant sleep. We just started letting #2 cry a bit. It was hard at first, but it's gotten better. Just know that it'll pass.