When our little guy turned 4 months it was like someone magically turned him into a horrible sleeper. From birth until about 3.5 months he was your normal newborn sleeper, mostly. Well, it turns out he was but I didn't know it at the time. Until I came across this great blog that made me feel better. He would go to bed around 11pm after trying to put him down 3 times. He'd wake up after may be 3-5 hours and then wake up every 2 hours after that. I always thought 11pm was insanely late but according to this blog, it is kind of normal for new borns!
He was not a napper though. And it turns out that no matter what, even if you think your baby is just not tired or not a napper, like we did, he needs his naps and sleeps. We were wise enough to know he needed at least one good long nap a day but he had a lot of little intermittent cat naps (which this blog also says is pretty normal). I do think he may have been a bit sleep deprived but it's our first baby and I just didn't know. He had to sleep in the carrier basically. We could get him to sleep in a swing sometimes. And when Grandma was actually around she'd rock him. But it was tough. As I write this, he is strapped to my chest in a carrier napping.
We were making strides in sleeping as 4 months neared. We were getting him to sleep more around 9pm and sometimes even earlier. And although I thought those newborn months were tough sleep, they were not. Let me repeat: those were the easy days! Our little guy woke up to the world at 4 months. He was distracted eating. He was finally aware of that big hairy thing licking him so much: his dog! He wanted to look around, even behind him. And sleep suddenly became hard.
We could no longer rock him to sleep and put him down in his cradle. He would always wake up and cry and cry. We'd shush and pat for 30mins to an hour and those were good days. And the real kicker is that when he went down, he'd often wake up an hour later. Yes, one hour. And then each and every hour after that! It was with every sleep cycle. His little alert mind just couldn't get over the little wake up.
At first, when he was awaking from 1am until 6am every hour, I thought he was going through a growth spurt. And may be he was. So I was feeding him every hour. In bed. Laying down. Because man was I tired (yes, it took me awhile to master breastfeeding while lying down--you can do it too!). I think I was developing a terrible sleep association without even meaning to: my boob. This happened night after night.
About 6 nights in and a day time melt down from mama, we tried to let him cry, just a little to self soothe. It was incredibly sad for me and I hated it. Even though we were there telling him it was okay and patting him. But I was exhausted and didn't know what else to do. The next day our little guy was sick and there was no way we were going to continue with the crying and soothing from afar.
I was making myself dizzy reading about sleep and babies and what to do. We felt our little guy was a bit to young and also too small/not heavy enough to start real 'sleep training.' And we weren't sure we were completely ready either. But we had to do something. My zombie like fog was unreal.
Then someone in my playgroup recommended the Troublesome Tots blog. She suggested using a swing to help your baby to sleep. We had a baby swing that we used to keep little guy calm and try to get him to nap but we had never used it for night sleep. Alexis from the blog says it's particularly good for babies who love motion. That's our guy: he loves to sleep in the stroller, in the car, in the carrier. So we gave it a try. The idea is that the swing helps them self soothe a bit and then you slow the swing down more and more until it's still. Once they can do into a still swing, you move them to the crib (where he was sleeping before month 4).
The first night it worked brilliantly and he went down very easily--grumbling for 12 minutes. He slept 4 hours in a row that night! He still woke up every hour for soothing but it seemed to be a step in the right direction: sleep for all. The second night was about the same and even the third. But on the 4th day, it was much better! He cries a bit more going into the swing but he sleeps a 2-5 hour chunk. Yes, that's big variation but I'd take it! Why? Because he then sleeps another chunk of time 2-3 hours. And he has gotten up once with the sleep cycle the night before last night and last night and all I had to do was up the speed on the swing. I did not have to use the boob to help him at that sleep cycle awakening. I think the whole family feels better with this even little bit more of sleep! I really hope it continues in this positive direction and then hope weening him from the swing isn't too hard. Even if it is hard, it's been worth it just to get a few nights of sleep.
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