Help with my 4.5 month old!! Going a little crazy here...

[Rosepdx]

So I need help. I'm about at my wits end with my son and his sleep. My son(B) is 4.5 months old and we started following Traceys Four S's about a month ago(before that time he had been bounced to sleep) and are trying to get onto an EASY schedule. I also have a two year old(E), which is making all this so much harder. Mostly because it seems to take me anywhere from 20-45 mins to get the baby down for his nap, so the older one has to entertain himself, which ends up looking like playing on my phone(which I have so much guilt over)

So this is our schedule, although there isn't too many set times, I just try to put him down after he's been awake for 1.5 hours(mostly because it takes us so long to go down)

wakes between 6-6:30
E at 7
A 7:20-8
S 8am
 
Then I repeat with 1.5 hours of awake time until 6:30pm when I feed him and he goes to sleep until a dream feed at 10:30pm. He then usually wakes back up at 1am and dh gets him back down and I feed him again at 3am when he wakes.

A few things to be noted about our schedule. If B needs another nap before his bedtime and it's too close to his night time sleep to get a long one dh will wear him and he'll get a 20 min cat nap around 5. Not always the case, but sometimes this happens.

When B goes down he usually wakes up around 35 mins after he is asleep for naps. Seems he's having a hard time with the sleep transition. If I let him be he will either start screaming after 10 mins or wake him self totally  up and start babbling.

I'm also finding the longer we've been doing the four S's the longer and harder it is to get him to sleep. He fights me so much that lately after holding him and finally getting him calm and putting him down to shush pat and then that not working I give up and bounce him to sleep.

So any suggestions would be lovely! Also anyone with a toddler have advice on how to manage both kids? Should we have some set nap times at this point? I noticed on a lot of other people's schedules they don't feed in the middle of the night, should I not be doing this?

Thanks all!!
Sarah

[lolsyb1982]

Hi there and welcome!

From what you've wrote he wakes from every nap after 35 minutes is that correct? A lot of babies this age do struggle to transition between sleep cycles and will need resettling (not always easy when you have a toddler as well I know) My DD2 couldn't transition until she was 7 months!

He could need a little push in his A times. At his age the average is 1hr 45/2hrs and could help get him past that 35min mark. It's still to early to move to set naps and days are very unpredictable at his age. 4-6 months is a pretty yucky period for sleep if I'm honest.

Here is the link to average A times Average A times- BOOKMARK ME! and is really handy to save as a favourite!

Could you log a couple of days sleep for the whole day so we can get a really good look if anything else can be tweaked to help him sleep a bit better.

So for bedtime, have you tried just putting him straight into his cot and seeing if he can settle himself? Then go straight to ssh pat in the cot if he can't? Maybe the holding aggravates him?

It's completely normal for a 4.5mo to still have 1 or 2 NF so go ahead and feed if he wants it.

Hope some of that helps and come back if you need some more help X

[Rosepdx]

Thank you so much for your reply! I'll log his schedule over the weekend and post early next week. It's funny that you had mentioned he might be getting irritated being held. My husband put him to bed last night with no screaming! He did his bedtime routine and instead of holding him just put him in his crib and walked out. After a little he wasn't settling himself so he went back in and shush/patted and he was down pretty quickly. So you might be right about that.

Will post again in a couple days! Thanks again.