EASY at 2 months, but should jump to 4hours at 4 months?

[Sofia October]

Hi mamas and papas,

I have a 4 month old girl, who started having some problems with her night sleep right when she hit 4 month mark

BF only, +1 oatmeal cereal mixed with BM.

She was on the EASY at 2 months, and started sleeping through the night at 3months with only 1 - 2 feedings.

Our EASY:
wake up - 7am
E - 7am (3oz milk, she wont take more...)
A
S 8:30-10am
E - 10am (5oz milk)
A
S 12-2pm (might be 30min, might be 2 hours)
E - 2pm (5oz milk)
A
S 4:14pm or 4:30 - 5pm (she really wants to sleep full hour here, but we wake her up, so she can get more sleep at night)
E 5pm (5oz milk)
E 6pm (2tbsp oatmeal cereal mixed with milk)
A bath
E 7pm (4-5oz milk)
S 7pm

She has been doing great and waking up to eat at 12-1am (5oz milk) and going back to sleep till 6:30-7am. But last week she started taking 2 hour nap in the morning and sleeping till 10:30am. The rest of the day still looks the same. She also started waking up at 4am and just talks to herself for good 30min but then is having hard time going back to sleep...And goes back to sleep then wakes up every 5-20min. Then at 6:30am I get her so she can eat.
I really need help here as I also have a toddler and getting only 2-3hrs/sleep for me requires either having coffee instead of blood or going insane. Should I push for 4 hour day? Or adjust her night feeding? Maybe dreamfeed?

Thank you all!

[Katet]

For a 4mo, I think her first nap is too early and it’s robbing sleep from the night. I’d push it out to 9am at the earliest and see if that helps.

[Sofia October]

Thanks for your reply Katet,

But do you think it will make her 1st name only 1 hour, thats not too short for a 4month old? She have done it couple times and on some days she would sleep till 10:30am... Should I still wake her up at 10am if she goes down at 9am?

[Sofia October]

Wanted to post an update on the last couple of days. We pushed our 1st nap to 9am, and she has been sleeping till 10am-10:30am every time. Afternoon naps didnt change at all. But she still wakes up at 4am every night... She talks to herself for 10-20min then starts whining and we give her a pacifier, but she holds it for 2-3min and starts soft crying again... This goes on and on till around 6am, when she falls back to sleep and wakes up around 7am to eat.

Any other advice? Should I move that 1am feeding or remove it? Let her cry it out?

Thank you

[Katet]

Please don't let her cry it out. She won't understand why you don't respond and all it does is show a baby their needs aren't important and they have broken trust.
I wonder if it's not 4mo growth spurt and the 4am wake up is hunger
It's still pretty normal to have 2 night feeds and the fact she's not resetting says hunger to me.

[Sofia October]

Our pediatrician told us to let her cry it out... I dont think I want to as she is too little and this is too early for her. Our problem is to find the right schedule, because what we have right now is not working and she is waking up 4am for more then a week now...
She is not hungry, I have tried feeding her but she simply refused, or had maybe 1-2oz and still didnt go to sleep She is having 5 feeding right now, each 5oz, so thats 25oz plus 1am feeding of 4-5oz and plus 2oz with her oatmeal cereal. Total of around 30oz should be ok for 4month old I guess. Maybe it's time to do 4 feedings during the day and try dream feed and move 1am to 2 or 3am feed? Anyone tried this?

[Katet]

Unfortunately many Drs and Paediatricians aren't trained in mental health and are often not always keeping up with research in all areas. My DH is the CFO of a place here that
has a sleep help program (attached to hospitals)  for babies under 2yo. They have over 50 rooms across the state for 4 night stays for families and babies to help them learn sleep skills, they have over 200 midwives who are trained in best practices and none of them ever recommend cry it out.

If she's not hungry, then have you looked at her mental stimulation. How much tummy time do you give her? (30mins across the day is recommended by world health organisation)  Is she getting outside time... watching trees is brain stimulation. 

[Sofia October]

I agree with you on cry it out. Not for me...

Yes, we spend at least 30min outside before every nap, and 30-60min tummy time...

Maybe she is sleeping too much? I mean 11-12 hours at night, plus 3-4hours during the day.
Or we just need to go to 4 hour EASY? And re-do our day?...

[Katet]

https://www-psychologytoday-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/moral-landscapes/201112/dangers-crying-it-out?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&amp&usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.psychologytoday.com%2Fau%2Fblog%2Fmoral-landscapes%2F201112%2Fdangers-crying-it-out

FYI... On CIO
While I respect all the years of training medical people have, after 15 years as a medical researcher (biomedical scientist) I know how easy it is to cherry pick information that proves the point we want to prove. I know from my own experience, I did let my DS1 CIO a few times and 1) it gave minimal improvement, but what I noticed was he had worse SA and was a more anxious baby than DS2. My sister did CIO with her eldest and didn't with her youngest, her Youngest is much more independent. And now as teens my friend who did lots of CIO with both her children, one has an eating disorder and the other anxiety problems, they may or may not be linked, but I notice it.

[Sofia October]

Katet,

Thank you for this extra info on CIO! As I said, we are not doing it, and right now are trying to resolve our problem by trying something else - naps time, feedings, etc, and not CIO for sure!

[Sofia October]

Wanted to share an update, as this might help someone who is in the same boat:

we have tried:

1. moving 1st nap to 9am - didnt help;
2. not doing solids for dinner - didnt help;
3. 4 hour EASY - dint help;
4. dreamfeed - didnt help;
5. more time outside - dint help;
....

as of right now she is starting to wake up even earlier.... last 3 nights she is up and crying 4am-ish... she has also started to sleep with her back and neck arched so crazy that we have to fix her almost every hour. So just an example, last night she went to sleep at 7:30pm and woke up 5am, while being asleep of total maybe 4-5hours that night...

really hope someone has an advice bc we are about to go insane here...