Hi there
Don't worry. It will get better. I was pulling my hair out for a long time - didn't STTN 10m ish. Awful.
Okay. I would drop down from 4 hour feeds for now, feeding more frequently. The focus of EASY is really to make sure your babe is fed regularly, sleeps regularly etc. Not all babes are the same, so 4h intervals at 4 months old can be too big a leap for some. So I would, for now, experiment a little and drop that interval down a touch. Something like feed every 3.5h for a day and see how it goes. If not interested in feeds, push it up a little to, say, 3.45h. Experiment.
Also, are you feeding from both breasts at each feed now? If not, try feeding from both sides before adjusting the feeding routine.
What does this do to your EASY? Mucks it up, yes... For a while EASY can look more like EAESEAES, and the Y can feel really rare! But that's pretty common. Use the EASY as a guideline, and your babes hunger cues as the rule. Tracey never advocated leaving a baby to go hungry - listening carefully and responding to their needs is the essence of baby whispering!
45 mins naps. These can be a OT sign OR an UT sign. Your babe being up over 2h at 4 months sounds familiar in the developmental leap but it's something you need to watch carefully. They can do this for a few days and then get OT building. The trick is to stay a step ahead of their body's needs and development (gets easier with time, promise!). The NWs seems like OT to me, especially now EWs as well. My guess is that hunger may be at play, but likely it's the light sleep (devil) that comes with OT.
Habitual waking - if it's bang on the same time each night, usually habitual. You'll get great advice on this over on NWs from the Goddesses there. And developmental milestones like rolling over are a pain and that can mean we don't celebrate what they've learnt. Best thing is to give them loads of practice with this during their A time - LOADS. Especially teaching them how to roll back again. But, TBH, they've learnt something new and can't help themselves. In a year's time, you'll look back at this and smile. Right now, it's frustrating as hell. I know, I know. My DS couldn't stop himself at every developmental milestone. I'm not sure if it was rocking himself on his hands and knees or learning to stand - whichever it was, I ground my teeth so badly at the time that I fractured my tooth and chunks fell off.
Those NW - too cold, too warm, too tired (so light sleep), not tired enough, doesn't know how to self soothe, too dark, too quiet, too light, too noisy, hungry, thirsty, bedclothes disturbing them.... and don't rule out teething just yet either. They can disturb sleep long before they come through! You're going to be Miss Marple for a while. We'll be on your team of detectives.
Hunger: at 4 months old it isn't unreasonable for your babe to be hungry. Not at all. I wouldn't expect any BF babe at that age to be STTN (no night feeds) and view those that do as the exception rather than the rule. I think we stopped night feeds at 5 / 6 months (when DS was ready and able to go through the night, not when I was ready). Your babe is growing and developing - that is their job. The aim, IMO, would be to get enough feeds in to encourage them to be able to sleep one long interval at night. Say 11pm until 4pm or so. Then feed and not again until the set wake up time for the day. Then, you eek out that early morning feed, pushing it a little later / making the feed shorter. The idea is to help their bodies realise that it's sleep time and to sleep the long period then - from 11pm to 7am.
BUT not all can do this for a while. And lots wake up at night for reasons other than hunger (my DS for example). And lots of babies have more unsettled nights when they have a DF, rather than no DF. They wake from hunger then go back to sleep rather than lots of wake-ups because they're lightly sleeping.
It gets better.
Charlotte
