Tips for Surviving the 4-Month Sleep Regression

The end. As I write this my perfect sleeper is no more (at least for now). We have been so lucky to have such a good sleeper, and I think Grant and I both knew it wouldn’t last forever. I’ve talked about how Grant and I use the Mom’s On Call method to guide our parenting as it relates to a lot of topics, including sleeping. This means that at three months old we changed Henry’s schedule. We dropped down to two naps and four feedings a day. We also dropped his swaddle at that time and moved him from the Rock N’ Play to the crib. It was a rough few nights, but we all got through it and Henry went back to sleeping through the night within a week. But now, he is waking up a few times a night and the logical analyst part of my brain has started looking for patterns or anything that might explain why this is happening now.

Let me take a moment here to say that I am not a medical doctor, so please consult your child’s physician for a science-based discussion on the topic of sleep habits. My comments below are based solely on my own experience, discussions with Henry’s pediatrician, and the little bit of academic research I’ve stumbled upon while trying to better understand baby sleep habits.

4 SLEEP REGRESSION INDICATORS

Cutting naps short. For us, sleep regression kicked in over a few weeks. Looking back, the first clue was that Henry started cutting his naps short, He’d start waking up 30 minutes or more before the end of his nap. He wasn’t ending his naps by crying like he was hungry, just lonely, so per our personal parenting strategy, Grant and I let him cry it out since he wasn’t in any physical danger (we’d watch him on the video monitor to make sure).
Tough crowd. Henry’s demeanor started to change. Just as we started to be able to get him to react to us is when he suddenly became disengaged or grumpy. He would burst out crying while still laughing and it was harder to make him laugh in the first place. In her book, Bossy Pants, Tina Faye talks about how babies are small drunk people and that was Henry. Though, now that I think about it more, I think she was referring to toddlers, not infants, but whatever. He was on an emotional roller coaster that we couldn’t follow. We chalked it up to him being overly tired.
Distracted during feedings. Within a week (or less) Henry started getting distracted during feedings by anything and everything and thus eating a whole lot less. For us, it seemed like Henry suddenly realized there was a world around him and had no interest in eating. I assume there is some cognitive development science that I could leverage here to prove that this is the age babies learn that things happen around them, but it’s really not the point of this article. What is important is that if Henry heard a noise he’d turn his head toward it and spit formula everywhere. If he saw a shadow he completely stopped sucking, mesmerized by a change in light that I didn’t even notice. We’d spend an hour getting 2 oz. of formula in him. Which makes for one really hungry baby.
Waking up through the night. After a day or two being distracted during eating, he started waking up, starving in the middle of the night. You know, that blood-curdling scream that isn’t just a whine, but one that indicates something is really wrong even though he looks fine on the monitor. Grant and I debated at 2 AM if we should go in or give him a few minutes to try to settle down. After 20 minutes of watching him on the monitor we still felt uneasy. We have become connoisseurs of our son’s cries and neither of us was comfortable ignoring this one all night. Grant offered him a bottle and he attacked it. Henry took a few ounces and started to fall back asleep. Grant put him back in his crib drowsy, and he fell asleep. A few hours later he woke up again. This time I went in and fed him right away. Again, he was ravenous and attacked the bottle. A few hours later he did it again. Clearly, this kid was starving. I think we’ve identified the problem.

HOW TO STOP SLEEP REGRESSION: MAKE LIFE REALLY BORING AND PREDICTABLE

Environment. With Henry being more aware of his surroundings he wants to take it all in and doesn’t want to spend time eating or sleeping. So, we’ve made it a point to only feed Henry in his room, with the door closed, and facing a corner. Basically, we are making it as boring as possible. He’s still not eating like he used to, but he’ll eat 4-6 oz. in a sitting now, so that’s a lot better.

Revisiting the schedule. As I mentioned, at 3 months old we dropped Henry down to 2 naps and 4 feedings. While that was fine for him (he just had his 4-month check up and is gaining weight), his new peckish eating habits mean that he isn’t able to eat enough at those feedings to get the total number of ounces he needs every day. So, we had to add back in a feeding. And, since he was cutting his naps short we added back a nap too. Now, he gets three naps and five/six feedings a day. And guess what!?! Henry is sleeping through the night again…mostly.

Guard the routine. We have had the misfortune of Henry’s sleep regression happening during the Christmas holiday. This means that Grant and I are totally out of our regular routine and our home. It’s been great for Henry to meet his extended family, but it means that we have to work really hard to find a quiet, boring environment to feed him in and to keep to the sleep schedule. It also means not going any farther than a nap is supposed to last if your baby falls asleep as soon as the car starts moving. Grant and I decided to hang out in a café for 90 minutes in order to time it so Henry’s “awake” time was in the café and his nap would line up with our drive home. True story. A two and a half hour drive took us four hours that day. Such is life with a baby.