4 mo - where do I start? Short naps and NWs!!

[CoraDora]

Hi, I'll be succinct in the hope that someone will have time to read and reply!

My little boy is 4 mo and the nws are killing me! He is waking hourly pretty much from 1am.
He has a ton of props, and he rarely naps longer than 40 minutes, and if he does, it is more like 2 naps stuck together with some APOPing glueing them together.

He is number three - we've been through the whole sleep training thing twice before - so we were just biding our time till 5/6 months like we did for number two when we took all props away cold turkey style and used pupd successfully. But the nws are just too much so I want to start now.

He is going 4 hours between feeds and he can stay awake 1.75-2 hours. But his naps are short, so there's not a huge point writing down our EASY.

My question is are his nws due to hunger, so should I go back to feeding him 3 hourly, and put st on hold? If I do St, do I take away all props but just keep the swaddle for a little while longer? Also, when I start st, is it realistic to be able to have the morning nap on the go (so I can still go out)?

I'd love some advice as I was thinking of starting this weekend x

[jessmum46]

Hi and hugs,

No, hourly NWs most definitely not (all) hunger.  At 4 months I'd expect a dream feed plus a night feed maybe, but not many more than that.  I assume you've ruled out any type of discomfort eg reflux?  Four hourly feeds are fine at this age for bottle fed babies, how many oz does he take?  Though if breastfeeding 4hourly may be too much and you may need to offer some top-ups....

How does he currently go to sleep?

I would ditch the swaddle at the same time as other props, no point in my mind doing the whole thing twice.

It's ok to have the morning nap on the go if you want to, but when sleep training it's probably easier/fairer to do all sleep in the same place for a while (at least a few days) to give more opportunities for learning.  Are you planning to use PUPD? 

[CoraDora]

Thanks so much for your reply - it really helps to have a sound board!

He's not in any discomfort in the day - he's actually a really happy, smiley and chatty little guy! He's propped up to the nines, so my guess is that he's just not resettling and may be a bit hungry/cold which wakes him up in the early hours.

He falls asleep on the boob or on the dummy, swaddled up, listening to white noise (which is on till we go to bed). I then give him a dream feed (unless he's woken before then and I've fed him but this hasn't happened for a while).

I started stretching out his feeds as he didn't want to feed 3 hourly but maybe we've gone too far the other way. I think I will try to feed him more in the day and see if this helps. Otherwise I'll be back sooner!

[jessmum46]

Let us know if we can help when/if you want to tackle the props x