- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Toddlers: 12 - 24 Months
userdeleted
member
When your LO was an infant (sleep related)
userdeleted
member
What was their sleep like around 4 months, if you remember? Charlie goes to sleep easily, but he wakes up frequently at night. Last night he was up at midnight (fed him), 3am, 5:30am (fed him), and 6:45am (fed him). Did anyone else's child have an issue with frequent wakings, and how did you deal with it?
He is still swaddled, and while he does break out of it sometimes, last night he didn't and he still woke up all those times. I don't jump right out of bed at the first little noise - I definitely give him time to put himself back to sleep and it doesn't happen. I'm not sure what to do! I think he's old enough for CIO (don't even bother lecturing me on that if you're thinking about it, I have zero problem with CIO and no one is going to convince me there is anything wrong with it), but I'm not sure if it will help because he doesn't have a problem going to sleep, ykwim? It's the waking up. Even if he cried himself to sleep, he'd still wake up a couple of hours later.
Any thoughts? Advice? I'm tired 
This discussion has been closed.
Re: When your LO was an infant (sleep related)
Is that his normal pattern? If not, then it sounds like the dreaded 4 month wakeful to me.
My oldest DD was STTN consistantly until 4 months. She had a 2 week period where she was up all.the.time. and then it got better.
Now, my youngest DD is up (normally) at 3, 5:30, 8:30. I'm tired too, mama. It has to get better.
Yep, that's pretty much what a lot of them do around that age. And no, he's way too young for CIO. He can't self soothe right now, esp. if he's swaddled.
He's probably hungry. They still eat several time a night, esp. if they are bf.
DS's sleep was horrible until 16.5 months, when we did sleep training and he started STTN 11 hours. Until that time, I nursed him to sleep, he had to be put in his crib asleep, and he was waking multiple times a night for hours wanting to nurse and play.
At four months though, we will still cosleeping and he was waking to eat every few hours.
Well, sounds like I was luckier than I thought with Leo. He was a total nightmare for the first 3 months (colic), but then he was STTN for 12 hrs by this time. Charlie was awesome at first - when he was like 2 months old he was only getting up once during the night. It's been getting progressively worse, and those of you with 2+ can probably understand how much more difficult it is to be sleep deprived for months on end the second time around. It's one thing when you have the option of "sleep when the baby sleeps," but now I have a toddler to chase around. He doesn't appreciate me laying around on the couch all day
One other thing I thought of - when did you all put them down for the night? Leo went down at 7 at the latest and slept until 7, but maybe that was abnormal. Charlie falls asleep at 7 too right now - maybe I should try to keep him up later?
Oh and Echo - I wholeheartedly disagree with you, but I don't want to argue about it. I know that neither of us will convince the other. And FWIW if I were going to try CIO I would unswaddle at least one of his arms so that he could self-soothe.
Hey, I'm going by what Ferber himself suggests- not before 6 months. ::shrug::
False. I have the book. It says that you can start trying at around 3-4 months if you feel that the issues are severe enough, and that if there is still any sort of problem you should - should - start sleep training at 5 months.
Again, we're just not going to agree (I read the book too and got something different out of it, I guess) As someone who still gets up with an 18 month old (thankfully down to once a night), I don't see the need to Ferberize such a young baby for normal wakings.
We can still be friends, though. :-)
Don't baby sleep issues just bring out the best in everyone
Echo- let's hope our next babies sleep!
Sounds good - group hug
Amen to that!
Zombie group hug.
My boys both started STTN at 4m1w. (We had to get reflux wedges for them; their sleep before that was HORRIBLE.) They were also swaddled till 6m. The room was dark, we had a fan for white noise; those things really helped.
Oh also, around 3.5m, they started to break out of their Miracle Blankets during the night and wake up crying. They'd cry until we re-swaddled them. So we actually started double-swaddling them! We'd put a SwaddleMe on over the Miracle Blanket. That might sound crazy and obviously you have to make sure the room temp is cool enough that they don't overheat, but it worked wonderfully from 3.5m till 6m; they just weren't ready to sleep well unswaddled before then. (We tried a few times.)
I agree - it doesn't seem like he's hungry all those times to me (which is why I didn't feed him every time he woke up). He really is throwing me for a loop - he's so different from Leo! Man, if I didn't think that the whole "every baby is different" thing were true before, having a 2nd child really proved that point
How dare you sleep train such a young baby! You must not love him very much.
I kid, I kid. We just finished up some CIO with Landon and he is now occasionally sleeping all night. Are you feeding him when he wakes? Landon was doing the same thing but we were cosleeping and I think he was mistaking me for his pacifier. Very annoying as I look nothing like his paci.
Are you bf'ing? There is a wakeful period at 4 months that a lot of bf babies go through. It can be pretty bad on mom and dad because a lot of babies have started STTN at that point and then all of a sudden are waking up several times a night again. If he was sleeping well and then recently has started waking multiple times, I'm guessing it's a wakeful period. They usually last anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks. Hope it ends soon!
That is exactly how Leo was. I ended up reading in the Ferber book, after I had already come to this conclusion myself, that some babies with colic are hypersensitive to touch, sound, light, etc - and really just need to be left alone when they get really worked up. Charlie is definitely not that way though - he responds well to even just seeing us for a second and a little tummy rub (not that it has helped, lol).
Another thing that is preventing me from really making an effort with a sleep training program right now is that I'm EBFing. With Leo I could be sure that he was getting enough to eat during the day, but not with Charlie. He definitely needs to be fed at least some of the times he wakes up during the night, and that leads to inconsistency, which makes it less likely again that CIO would work. I don't want to do it unless it's going to work - all that stress and effort for nothing does not sound appealing to me, lol.
It is normal for babies to go through a period of sleep regression at 4 months- that is when they really wake up to the world around them. Personally I would just suck it up and wait it out. Most kids get past it in a few weeks.
I also personally think it is way to early to CIO, but it is your child and you are going to do what you are going to do.
M and J are completely different in their sleep patterns. M didn't STTN (even the technical 5 hours) until he was 10 months old. J goes 5-7 hours at the beginning of the night and then gets up every 2-3 hours after that.
As for putting him down later, I did that with M at that age. I think he went to bed around 9. His good sleep was at the beginning of the night too so I didn't want to "waste" too many of his sleep hours being awake.
ETA: because I EBF Michael, I chose to wait until 6 months to do Ferber - this got him down to 1 night waking and 1 4:30 in the morning waking (so 2 night wakings, lol) but they definitely were to eat. Around 8 months we were doing one night feeding and at 10 months he was giving me 12 hour stretches. Now he does anywhere from 12-15 at night with 13 being the norm.
Oh, maybe this is it! I like the idea of something that will "fix" itself, so I hope you're onto something here
Yeah, that makes sense. I had to stop BFing at one month to go back on my MS meds, so that wasn't a factor by the time we started sleep training.
I hope it really is just the infamous 4-month wakeful and he starts sleeping better again soon!
Oh and re: bedtime, our boys went to bed at 8:30ish the first 8 months, until they were ready to drop the third nap. That's when we pushed it back to 7.
Jack went through it. It was rough for a few weeks, plus I had just gone back to work, so I was soooo tired. I think kellymom and askmoxie have a couple articles on the 4 month sleep regression.
At 4 months, DD was really close to sleeping through the night. We had typically one wakeup. However, we were keeping her up a lot later--she went to bed around 9:30-10, and we would cluster-feed (and I FF'd) prior to her going to sleep. She'd have her regular dinner bottle (around 5-6pm), and I'd give her more at 7 pm, and more at 8:30. Then she would sleep usually for a least 6 hours if not 8.
Good luck.
No, thank goodness! That was a big fear of mine - I'm sure you understand that. But no, he really is one of the happiest babies I've ever seen. So really, the night wakings are much easier to handle than Leo's issues because my nerves aren't all shot to hell from nonstop crying during the day, lol.
DD was waking 3 times a night from 3-4 months - she's eat and go right back to sleep. Right over 4 months, she'd wake up and would eat a tiny bit, but generally would go right back to sleep as soon as I picked her up and would wake up and start crying as soon as I put her down in the crib. She'd drink if I gave her a bottle, but she would go back to sleep w/o it, as long as I was holding her. I talked to the pediatriatrician, she advised to let DD CIO for the middle of the night wake ups. She said the fact that she wasn't eating was a sign that this was a soothing/sleep pattern issue and not hunger.
I was a little unsure about it, but also thought DD wasn't getting good sleep either. DH and I decided to let DD CIO for at least the 1st 6 hours after she went to sleep and then we would take it from there. First night she woke up after 4 hours, cried 45 minutes, went back to sleep for 3 hours, I gave her about 5 minutes and she went back to sleep w/o me even going in; another 3ish hours and I got up immediately, but she was a back to sleep by the time I got to her door. 2nd and 3rd nights she woke once or twice for maybe 5 minutes and then went back to sleep on her own. She has mostly STTN since she was 4.5 months old. A few set backs here and there b/c of travel or illness, but it rarely takes more than a day or two to get her back on schedule.
At maybe 8ish months we had to sleep train for bedtime, but that only took one night.
oh that is so good to hear!!!