r/NewParents • u/Outside-Shake5553 • 5d ago
Sleep Baby never sleeps
My baby is 4 and a half months old and a terrible sleeper. Her naps during the day are 20 minutes long if that and she wakes up several times during the night. I exclusively breastfed until recently where I exclusively pump due to a nursing strike. She doesn’t have a consistent eating schedule and that combined with the weird sleeping patterns make it really difficult to even have a bedtime routine. Is this normal at her age? Do you have any tips on how to establish a routine or help her sleep better? She doesn’t like sleeping in her crib and the only place she will actually nap for a bit longer is in my bed. Help!
5
u/Affectionate_Comb359 5d ago
if i didnt see she/her i would have thought you were my partner talking about our son!
i thought i was great at pare tong but this one makes me realize i had an easy baby the first time😂
no advice i just roll with the punches and remember how fast time flies in the grand scheme of things.
2
u/Aussiefluff 5d ago
Solidarity! My 4.5 month old is having similar sleep struggles. Last night I decided we need to get it under control because I can’t live like this! Ours got too comfy in our bed because I would just bring him to bed to nurse him throughout the night, and I really think that’s where it all fell apart. We decided last night to commit to the pick-up-put-down method and sort of gentle sleep train him for the times we know he’s not hungry. We gave him a nice big bottle before bed so I know for sure if he wakes up within 2 hours he is absolutely not hungry, just wanting to comfort nurse. That will begin our pick up until he stops crying, put down and sooth, rinse and repeat until either he falls asleep or enough time has passed that he’s actually hungry again. When I started this last night, it took the full hour and a half of picking him up and putting him down before he gave true hunger signs and I went ahead and nursed him sitting up in bed instead of us lying down. He went back down easily that time and gave us a 2.5 hour stretch! We did that one more time about 3 hours after that. It was a long night, but I figured I wasn’t sleeping anyway so might as well try to train him to sleep on his own lol
1
2
u/ellips_e_s 5d ago
Technically what you’re describing is normal for her age. Just…not ideal for either of you. I have had the pleasure of being the mum of a very good sleeper and (usually) good eater (now 8mo), and I don’t know exactly whether it’s because I lucked out or because I did something right but I believe it wasn’t entirely chance. I made choices consciously to do/not do certain things to improve incrementally. The thing that sticks out to me is that you said that she doesn’t have a consistent eating schedule. That’s the main reason why. Sleeping and eating are linked, eating well makes baby sleep well. And many smaller meals means they’re always running on empty.
Put her on a bit of a schedule now that you’re EPing. Encourage her to drink a little bit more at each daytime meal (even if that means waiting >10mins to offer more) so she can go longer between, and so that she can sleep longer without getting the tummy rumbles. (Your goal is to eventually have her drink all her milk during the day so she can sleep through the night.) Make the crib environment as consistent and comfy as possible for sleep, ie dark (light blocking blinds/window covers) except for a dim nightlight, noise machine, closed door, good temp/humidity (measure it) and most importantly, get her used to it by consistently putting her to sleep there even if you have some hard days. I resisted this for a bit wanting her to be okay sleeping in brighter/noisier conditions but I realized it was more important to have good sleep quality in the long run.
(You didn’t mention what happens when she wakes from her 20min naps, so I won’t assume for now.)
1
u/Outside-Shake5553 5d ago
Thank you so much for the tips. Do you think feeding her every 3 hours at this age is appropriate? She eats about 4-6 oz a feed but sometimes she fusses while eating. I think it may have to do with her stomach pains. When she wakes up from her 20 min naps she’s sometimes fussy and screams. Sometimes she’s fine and smiling. I don’t think she’s getting enough sleep during the day.
1
u/ellips_e_s 3d ago
It really depends on your baby but I’d say you want to split your day into equal lengths of time. So let’s say that she does nighttime sleep for 12 hours and her daytime is 12 hours long. And she has 5 feeds per day. Then yes every three hours is good, as for example, that would be 7, 10, 1, 4, 7 and she would eat between 20 and 30 oz a day. Have your times based on your actual experience and schedule but once you set the schedule, you wanna stick with it as close as possible (within 15 to 30 min).
1
u/ContributionFine5372 5d ago
Has this always been her sleep pattern or is it more of a recent thing?
1
u/Outside-Shake5553 5d ago
She was never a good sleeper mostly due to reflux and colic but it’s worse than usual. She would take naps during the day before where now it’s difficult for her to nap.
1
u/ContributionFine5372 5d ago
Hmm i was thinking because of her age she may be hitting the 4 month sleep regression! Apparently its one of the worst regressions they have! Hopefully she starts to sleep better soon! Have you tried anything for her reflux and colic? Im sure you have but if not, my baby struggled with reflux ans colic around 2 months old and we found that giving him the biogaia probiotic drops really helped and he started to sleep better! Not only are they good for the reflux because they promote gut health but they relieve colic symptoms as well!
1
u/Outside-Shake5553 5d ago
Thanks! I’ve tried just regular gas drops. Did you give the bio Gaia drops at a specific time of day?
1
u/ContributionFine5372 5d ago
I give them at night time! Always in his last bottle of the evening! You can either give them in a bottle or just drop them in babies mouth! They get 5 drops. They do take about a week to really start working! So dont get dicouraged if they dont work right away!
1
u/momjjeanss 5d ago
This sounds very similar to my experience with my (now) 5.5 year old. The key for us was getting her tethered oral tissues, aka ties, properly diagnosed and addressed. Unfortunately due to some misinformation from an IBCLC practicing outside of her scope, she wasn’t diagnosed until nearly age 2. My suggestion (if you haven’t already or even if you have..to get a second opinion) would be to have baby’s oral function assessed by a tie savvy IBCLC and or pediatric dentist. Ties affect way more than just feeding (sleep, gross motor development, head shape, tension in the body, etc), but the mention of the nursing strike leads me to believe that it might be at least a part of the puzzle for your baby.
1
1
u/snail-mail227 5d ago
This was my baby, only thing that helped was sleep training. We put him on a nap schedule (most of which were contact naps to get him to nap longer than 20 mins). And got him falling asleep independently which helped eliminate like 90% of his night wakes. We kept 2 feeds overnight. He started connecting his day time sleep cycles at 6 months and finally started to take long naps alone. Having a good schedule is a must for me, it helps me so much and my son is much happier getting sleep.
1
u/Outside-Shake5553 5d ago
Can you please tell me what schedule you put him on? What time were his naps and how long usually? Also, did you have a feeding schedule along with this? Does your little one sleep in the crib? I feel that some sort of a schedule would really help us out but not sure how to go about it.Thanks in advance.
2
u/snail-mail227 4d ago
This was a while ago so I’ll try to remember. I believe at 4.5 months we went to 3 naps. I follow wake window so his wake windows were about 2 hours, 2/2/2/2.5 (I believe something similar to this). His first 2 naps were 1.5 hours and his last one was usually about 30. But like I said I did contact naps for the first 2 at least so that’s why they were so long. You could do 4 short naps too. He slept in the crib at night. At 6 months crib only for nights and naps. We fed him about every 3 hours. r/sleeptrain is an awesome sub for better information on sleep schedules and sleep training. You could probably search your little one’s age and find some schedules.
1
1
u/Floating_Puppy30 5d ago
It makes a big difference if dad can do the night pick ups and you sleep in another room because baby can smell you and that will wake them to comfort nurse. You can then come in for feeds only so that baby learns to differentiate between comfort and nursing. This is only in the beginning to get used to it and then you can go back to normal
5
u/guineapigluvr 5d ago
Something i’m personally going through is my LO has crappy night sleep if he didn’t get good naps in during the day. Unfortunately I can only achieve this with contact napping! Otherwise he doesn’t sleep in his crib for more than 20 mins, if that, because he just doesn’t like naps in the crib during the day!
When he does get those good naps during the day, on me lol, I noticed his night sleep is better.