4 months old getting worse
Hi everyone. This is my second girl and she's turning 4 months old today. I am so lost, I don't understand her at all and things are getting worse, I need your help.
We went through the witching hours where she would scream every-single-evening for 20 to 40 minutes for NINE consecutive weeks. She stopped week 10 for about 2 weeks. Evenings were calm, a feed (EBF) and BOOM good night.
Her night stretches were constantly about 6 hours long for the 1st and then shorter for the following ones.
She turned 3 months old and progressively things got a lot worse:
- She became very easily fussy, naps became really bad (even in carrier she would scream and fight).
- She started needing the boob to link every single cycle for naps. She refused it for bedtime, so my husband was rocking her instead.
- Bedtime became a nightmare, screaming murder for up to 70 minutes before passing out (she was undertired, we understood this later, she was getting very fussy after only 40 minutes of being awake from her last nap and we thought the fussiness was fatigue. It was overstimulation. We changed the evening for a very low stimulated one, lots of holding, soft voice, dim light etc and now she falls asleep after 2 hours wake window with little crying (about 5 minutes), while my husband rocks her).
She had a peak where for a few days she slept very badly at night (up every 1 to 3 hours) and then she became less fussy, naps became easier and night stretches back to 6h (for the first stretch). We thought "phew, the 4th month regression is behind us, it was a hard 4 weeks".
But well well well, after a few days much better, nights are back to very bad. Short stretches, long time to fall back asleep, need the boob to fall asleep.
She has 3 naps: around 2 hours in the morning in the carrier (been doing this for the last 2 months). 2 hours wake window then about 1.5 to 2 hours nap in the early afternoon: contact in my arms, where she keeps needing the boob to link cycles so impossible to put her down in her crib. Then another 2 hours wake window and a bridge nap of 20 to 30 min. So her wake windows are 2/2/2/2 I don't think I can extend the last one because she gets so fussy and crazy with nursing, it's already hard to get her till 2 hours. I know she sleeps about 4.5 hours / day and around 11 hours at night. I believe she has high sleep need, like me and my first (who was an unicorn baby and slept 13 hours straight at 3 months old so I've never known any sleep issues with her).
We are using a SWAP from the book Precious Little Sleep which is breaking the boob association so in the evening I nurse her until she is drowsy then hand her over to my husband who rocks her and then we transfer her (the goal being to progressively reduce rocking and settle in the crib).
- Is she getting too much day sleep? She gets easily overstimulated and tired. She falls asleep easily at the 2 hours mark during the day.
- why is she not back at 6 hours stretches?
- could CIO work knowing she is a big cryer?
Many thanks if you read this and can help me ♡