Help! The 4th month sleep regression!

Well my sweet baby turned 4 months old a few days ago. And the dreaded R word pretty much rode in with her four month milestone to the T. For the passed week we've been struggling with naps not lasting more than 45 minutes. And nights.... we went from the beautiful dreamy and cushy 12 hours a night straight through.... to three to three and a half hours max over night. And sadly for my poor eye bags... usually only 1 1/2 hours to two hours.

It's amazing how fast you can become sleep deprived.... I feel like a zombie. The worst part is that I feel like it's even worst than when I was big and round and waiting for her to make her entry into this world. I was sleep deprived already then. As my belly grew so did the sleep deprivation and the amount I was uncomfortable. This time it's just hitting us all at once. Sadly I can't just sleep in bed till 10 am to make up for all the amount I am losing over night like I did before Avah was born. Now I have this tiny human being that isn't sleeping, and cranky yelling at me.

The sad part is we have probably been shooting ourselves in the foot a little. We have been letting her nap four or five times a day to make up for the amount she isn't napping.... We .... well I have let her sneak into our bed a few times too. Momma needed her shut eye.

The worst part of all of this is that a lot of the literature I read says our 12 hours a night is a thing of the past. That our baby will sleep well again but may never sleep quite like that ever again.

On the other hand.... our baby still isn't doing as bad as she could be. I'm sure every mom who is dealing with a little less sleep reads the story about the mom getting one hour of sleep. REJOICE that is not me and I can tell you a secret. Misery loves company and boy was it a full house after I read that.

Now I realize that some mom's could rolls their eyes at me.... 'pft please it's been a week wait till you've been doing it three months.... well I have three words for them... No thank you. Glen and I have discussed what we are going to begin doing to try to help our baby sleep well again. I've been doing a lot of extra curricular reading on the topic and there thankfully is a lot of resources for times like this. Here's a little compiling of the ones we are going to try!

1. Firm up our routine.

With Christmas having just passed.... we slacked off a little and let things get pretty lax around her. and GASP we even let avah go three days without a bath.. normally she gets a dunky doo as part of her bed time routine. Now I know what your thinking again.... babies don't need a bath everyday. But it's Avah's favorite thing of the day. So we have to get back to that

2. Get up at the same time everyday to facilitate napping during the day.

Again this is a little part of the routine we want to establish with Avah

3. Put her down full.

Loads of mommy blogs advise against feeding associated with sleeping but I really want to make sure Avah is full. I think she may be hungry. And, really who wants to sleep if their tummy is rumbly.

4. Ensure A Clean Diaper

For obvious reasons i'm sure.

5. Ensure we play during the day.

If her mind is stimulated while she is awake she may be tired enough to go down hard for a nap. We have had days were my dog barking wont even make her flinch (and he has a loud booming bark) Even when he barks inside of her room some days.... Other days, you drop a spoon in the kitchen and she's screaming awake. Lol. I prefere the baby who sleeps through the dog.

6. Establish a time for naps.

I want to be putting her down at around the same time during the day, maybe doing this will help her know that about 1030... it's nap time.

7. Tune out. 

We know she is blossoming into a social butterfly and with that certain things like the TV really catches her attention, so i suggest turning the TV of when trying to put them down for a nap. We can hear the TV from Avah's room and some days she really cranes her neck trying to listen to or see the TV.

8. Night time is boring time.

Try to keep stimulation to a 0 at night time so she doesn't start associating it with an opportunity to play.

9. Let her try to put herself back to sleep. 

We want her to be able to sleep. And like always, if she isn't crying for me, she doesn't need me. Just because I can see her moving on the monitor does not mean i'll be going to her.

Well there you have it. I'm so exhausted that something in this pile has to work right??

I'll get back to you to let you know how these things work for me!

UPDATE: FEB 14th, 2016

We have had utter success with our tactics. The first week employing our strategies was tough. Mostly because since I wasn't sleeping great at night I wanted nothing but to sleep in in the morning. But getting her up at the same time everyday really work. As a compromise, I pushed back the alarm an hour. Instead of setting my sights on 830 rise time I went with 930 and when things started getting better I worked it back to 9 then 830 where I had wanted to be originally.

Being clean and FED was really important. She was for sure hungry at times.

We also had to endure a little heart break at times and let her fidget a few times. Especially the first few days. I could hear that she was awake. She would start with chattering to herself then start yelling and possibly escalate to crying a little. I can tell her different types of cries. If I knew she was just crying for me instead of the MOM I SERIOUSLY NEED YOU cry. I just let her sit five minutes, if she was still yelling and whining for me I let her win. We got up and went straight to an activity. I started engaging her. And honestly usually on these days if I played and talked to her for half an hour, you could watch her get tired. After that she usually went down and stayed down. (**For naps during the day)

At night we tried really hard to maintain a dark room, quiet, boring. If everything was boring she didn't want to sleep. Cause who wants to be up in the boring night time to stare at the boring wall. LOL!. But we also made sure if we knew she wasn't hungry (i.e had just ate the previous time awake) we tried not to take her out of her room even. She got re-snuggled and put back to sleep. This is where patience wore thin sometimes. She does this crazy annoying thing, (lol) where she is so tired and relaxed that she has her eyes shut and starts to drift off then she realizes that she is falling asleep so she cries to wake herself up a little and 1/2 a second later back to my calm sleeping baby, over and over and over and over. When she did this we just had to wait it out. We also started setting her down when she was sleepy and surprisingly at night it was easier because the room was dark, nothing to look at. She would fidget a little get comfortable and put herself to sleep. During the day however she would roll over, look at stuff, look out the window. Anything to keep herself stimulated to be awake.

It was a slow month and a half. But i'm very happy to report we have had 3 consecutive days of 730-730. In fact this morning I was sore (since i'm breast feeding) and she was still sleeping at 8 so I may or may not have been a little louder in the kitchen trying to wake her a little.

We also timed her total sleep time and some days she would be sleeping 18 hours and at this age (not that it's a perfect estimation by any means) but typically they need 14-15 hours. And we would see this pattern, great naps and then poor nights. To fix this we would not let her sleep more then 2 hours at a time. If she was having three naps this could mean 6 hours of sleep during the day. If she got much more than this during the day it's understandable why certain days she maybe would get 7 hours over night in total, and that wasn't a habit we wanted to enforce.

Another big one was watching her like a hawk for sleep signs. As she got older they are becoming a lot more hidden. But once her eyes glaze over, it's nap time. But now she will rub her face and her eyes glaze and her eyes get red and she plays different. They sound like they should be a lot easier to see, but the thing is is that she can seem content but be tired where as before I knew it was nap time when she would fuss.

Now I know what your thinking. HA! three days it's all a rouse she'll go back to not sleeping. I've learned a few things on our journey. I know that 730-730 just isn't realistic for every night. But at the same time we went down to waking every hour or two. So i considered it a victory when she slept five in a row. Especially since I have a hard time getting back to sleep at night, sometimes she was up again before I could fall back asleep. Take the small victories, trust me.

A Few Tips & Tricks

1. Start with naps. No one has patience at night when your exhausted. And when your tired, your way less likely to stick to a routine. 

2. Shorten up naps to 1.5 -2.5 hours depending how many times your kids nap during the day.

3. Allow total day time sleeping to only be 1/4 of the appropriate sleep time for your child. I.E. For Avah right now average sleep time is 12-15 hours so I don't let her sleep more then 5 hours during the day in total. 

4. Examine your routine. Is it too complicated? When your frustrated are you just throwing it all out the window in a moment of helplessness?

5. Take the small victories. If you got three hours instead of two, take a deep breath and see this as progress.

6. Understand that it may take a looong time. 

7. And understand that, this too shall pass. At some point in your life your going to be looking back wishing you had this cute little baby to snuggle again. 

8. If things get bad where you become unhappy or grumpy, put life on pause for the day. Cut down to only necessities and lean on your partner. Is it important to you to get your baby and other kids dressed every day? Try a lazy day on the couch with your kids in jammies to have a little catch up day. And who knows maybe mom will sneak in a few minutes of blissful shut eye. 

9. Bust out the freezer meals. Nothing more annoying than having a tired baby, being tired and trying to make a meal. Freezer meals are a god send in this situation. 

10. Stick to your guns. You'll make it through. And the more conviction to a routine that works for you (whatever it may be) the more likely you are to see success in the end. And just know there will be days you will question EVERYTHING. And thats okay too :)