4 month old not sleeping, ferber, swaddle transition- ADVICE!

November 23, 2015 4:28 AM

My 4 month old sweet little girl decided about 2 weeks ago she didn't want to sleep her usual 5-7 hours through the night, and now wakes up every hour or two needing help getting back to sleep, and it's killing me :( Our bedtime routine consist of bottle, bath, then rock until she's asleep at between 7-8 pm. She would sleep until 1-3 am for a feed and then sleep again until 6-7am...not anymore and it's continued for a couple weeks. She uses a pacifier which is the biggest culprit, and she is still swaddled. It's a vicious cycle, re-swaddle her tight, the paci falls out she wakes up crying, or even the paci will still be in and she will drop it just waking up grunting and wiggling around and then it falls out. She is a very active sleeper, I feel like she's trying to get out of the swaddle all night. Usually I have to pick her up and rock her back to sleep or get up to pat her back put the paci back in.

The other biggest problem is that she is swaddled still and is fighting it, she screams and fights the swaddle to get out when I'm trying to put her down but will fall asleep happy because she will wake herself with her active arms and legs if she isn't swaddled. Also...she's on this poppy lounger on her side (not the breast feeding one, this one is a lounger) I know you aren't supposed to sleep them on there, but it was the only place she would sleep as a newborn and she sleeps in a crib next to us at night so I watch her carefully. So, I think it is time for a boot camp to remove one or all and get her into her crib but I'm scare of "shocking her" and her getting zero sleep, but I know if I do it I have to stick to it. She may be starting to teeth too so I don't want to do something and upset her more. I'm thinking its time for her to learn how to sleep flat on her back without the swaddle or paci in her crib but that seems to be a lot all at once. She just seems uncomfortable. She naps in her crib on her side on the pillow for between 1-2.5 hours at a time during the day. I've read about the Ferber method but not sure I totally get it or that I am strong enough to listen to her cry. Do babies adjust with time, should I let her cry for however long I think is appropriate (5-8 mins checking on her patting her often), and keep going all through the night until she falls asleep? Or do you eventually call it quits if she doesn't settle and go back to the way I have been doing it just so the little girl can sleep comfortably. I've tried every kind of sleep suit and swaddle, the swaddlemes are too tight for her and she freaks out, I've tried the sleep suit but she spazzes when I try to lay her flat on her back wakes up screaming, and recently bought the zipadee which she didn't like because of her arms. Should I get rid of everything at once and just stick to it?? Any advice would be greatly appreciate -exhaustedfirsttimemom

posted by MamaBee223 to Human Relations (22 answers total)

Response by poster: Oh, and just to specify. I'm not looking to sleep train her to sleep through the night I know she will still need a feed or two at this age. I'm more looking to get her into her crib without the props that seem to be waking her up every hour or two. (Paci, swaddle, boppy lounger) so that she learns its okay to sleep flat on her back
posted by MamaBee223 at 4:55 AM on November 23, 2015

I think it is time for a boot camp to remove one or all and get her into her crib... but I know if I do it I have to stick to it.

You've answered your own question.

(In our own situation, it went much better than our imaginations had conjured up.)
posted by fairmettle at 4:56 AM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

It sounds like you know what you want to do. Helping baby learn to fall asleep on her own will ultimately be good for everyone's health. If you try the Ferber method for a week (see chart on breakdown of check-ins here) and it doesn't work, there's no harm done; it doesn't sound like things could get worse.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:57 AM on November 23, 2015

The best way to extinguish a behavior is to stop reinforcing it. I suspect you may need to go through a period of listening to her cry until she goes back to sleep. Or, on preview, what everyone else said..
posted by HuronBob at 4:58 AM on November 23, 2015

I'm sorry for you MamaBee223, but this sounds very familiar. The good news is, it will all end at some point in time. Our best solution was to knock her out with a bottle of milk with some added rice flour or carob bean flour. That give her just enough to digest to keep her quiet for a bit longer. Getting out twice a night in stead of four times makes all the difference. I hope things work out for you and believe me, there will be a point in life that you actually start missing these insane scenario's.
posted by ouke at 4:59 AM on November 23, 2015

Response by poster: Thank you guys. Yes, I do know what NEEDS to be done... but I just wondered if doing it ALL at once would be too much of a shock. As in, should I get rid of paci first, then swaddle, then put her in her crib or just bite the bullet and do it all. That's where my confusion was...and for how long if she just doesn't seem to be taking to it. In my mind I imagine the first night going something like this: put her down without anything...she cries, I go in every couple mins, she continues to cry wakes herself up even more and that cycle will continue until the wee hours....when do you call it quits?
posted by MamaBee223 at 5:14 AM on November 23, 2015

Response by poster: Oh, and Ive been supplementing with formula, it's almost as if she sleeps WORSE now... She will take a good formula bottle 4-5 oz before bed... but still wake up. It's not hunger waking her up for sure because I can get her to calm down without a feed until her usual 1-3 am wake up. I'm sure at one point I WILL miss this, I can't wait for that :)
posted by MamaBee223 at 5:15 AM on November 23, 2015

We have had good luck with the Baby Merlin Magic Sleepsuit getting through the transition from bassinet to crib. Our baby was keeping herself up kicking and rolling, and with the Sleepsuit she settles right down. She does cry for anywhere from 2-5 minutes before falling asleep, and I just listen on the monitor and only intervene if it doesn't sound like her usual sleepy protests.

That said, my 5 month old still wakes up 2x a night, so it's not a miracle, but it works for us.
posted by cabingirl at 5:23 AM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think for most babies, you can either get rid of everything at once and boot camp it or you can have a scenario that doesn't involve much crying, but you can't really do both. Changing her sleep surface and taking away the swaddle and pacifier will probably be really tough for her and involve quite a lot of crying. The gentler methods that involve no/less crying will doubtless take longer, but if you do not feel like you can/want to leave her to cry, they are options - methods like pick up/put down or gradual retreat where you're still there, you're just getting her to settle back to sleep in her own bed. (Personally I would go for a more gradual approach rather than having her deal with crib/swaddle/pacifier and you not being in the room to rock her all at once - that's a lot for a 4-month-old to deal with - but it's up to you.)

This sounds like pretty much typical 4-month sleep regression, though, which tons of babies go through, and the good(ish...) news is that it generally will settle down by itself to a greater or lesser degree no matter what you do. So if you feel like you want to e.g. get her in the crib/move away from the pacifier at this time, then you can, but don't feel like you need to or you'll ruin her sleep habits for life.

put her down without anything...she cries, I go in every couple mins, she continues to cry wakes herself up even more and that cycle will continue until the wee hours....when do you call it quits?

If you want to do Ferber, read Ferber's book, which gives a lot of very detailed information on exactly how you do his method. When it comes to your baby and your comfort levels, though, the 'when do you call it quits' question is really up to you and your scenario. I mean, I didn't do any sleep methods that involved crying/leaving the room, because my kid would just freak out and scream until she vomited when not picked up, but if I'd had a kid who cried for a bit then calmed down again I may well have considered it. It's up to you, is what I'm saying - there isn't really much should or must here. Might be best to get hold of a few sleep books/resources which come at it from different approaches, including Ferber's book, and see what pathway you feel best about having read over those.
posted by Catseye at 5:29 AM on November 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

Just a thought -- could she be teething? 4 months is not unheard of for that. If she is in discomfort from that, then "boot camp" would not solve the issue.

Also, she could be having a growth spurt. Things that work like magic for infants for a given period of time often stop working suddenly as they reach another phase of development, and parents need to roll with it.
posted by RRgal at 5:29 AM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Anecdata: our little one spent his first few months sleeping swaddled in his bassinet. We moved him into his crib and quit swaddling the same night. I was very worried it would be too much of a shock to switch all at once, but kiddo didn't even seem to notice. We did this around 4.5 months.
posted by trunk muffins at 5:33 AM on November 23, 2015

Response by poster: I'm thinking she may be teething because she is drooling A LOT and she is shoving my hand in her mouth forcefully, and biting hard you can tell its causing her discomfort but soothing when she's biting. I'm keeping that in mind with all of this. I think I'm more nervous about that pillow she is still sleeping on because she's so squirmy that it scares me so even though she may be teething I feel like I need to get her onto a flat surface...even if it means me getting up more. Great advice everyone....Thank you.
posted by MamaBee223 at 5:37 AM on November 23, 2015

I came to second the magic Merlin sleep suit... Our baby is a tiny bit older than yours and one thing that has helped transition from lots of soothing was getting him attached to a comfort item.
posted by flink at 5:57 AM on November 23, 2015

Best answer: Sounds like the Four Month Sleep "Regression" (Maturation) combined with some sleep crutches. And maybe some teething. Her sleep patterns are maturing so she can sleep longer at a stretch BUT she's more awake during the wakeful moments and having trouble soothing herself back to sleep. I'm going through this now with my second little one and I HIGHLY recommend the Baby Sleep Science blog. I even bought their four month sleep regression booklet this time around. https://childsleepscience.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/the-four-month-sleep-regression-what-is-it-and-what-can-be-done-about-it/

A few ideas: (1) try the Merlin suit. It really helps a lot of babies in the 3-5 month range. (2) changing one thing at a time is a good rule of parenting. I'm not sure what I'd change first if I were you ... maybe the swaddle to Merlin. Then the pillow to flat surface. Then maybe soothe to sleep solo. Then maybe pacifier? (3) I've read you can teach a baby to self soothe through tears or time but if you have to teach them, you can't avoid both. The baby sleep science booklet has ideas for both and how long to expect each method to take.

If you DO Ferber, read the book please. If you do Weissbluth (total extinction), read up on it but maybe not the actual book which is confounding. You need to be fully prepared and committed. If you half ass it, you're only making everyone miserable.

Signed -

- No expertise here, but with you in solidarity
posted by semacd at 6:08 AM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I second the four month sleep regression, and would also like to tell you that (for both of our babies) 4-6 months was a real shitshow in terms of sleep, but then they became much more tractable.

So by all means, go ahead and try some things now. BUT if you try All The Things, and you just feel like your baby is crying more every night and it's not working and you are never going to sleep again and AIGHHHHHHHH, then my recommended plan B is:
1) Give in completely, and do whatever it takes to get sleep for you and your baby with flagrant disregard towards creating bad habits
2) When baby turns 6 months old, come back to this thread and try all the suggestions.

Sleep training for us DID NOT WORK at four months. But as it turns out, at 6 months old, we didn't even need to sleep train, they just started sleeping again. (We did need to sleep train at 9, 18, 20, and some other months; it's not a one-time deal; but all those times it worked like it's suppoesd to: 1-3 horrid nights, followed by a major improvement in everyone's quality of life.)

Hang in there. This was the absolute toughest period for me because it had been so long since I got a full night's sleep and all of a sudden things were backsliding and it was torture. But you'll get through!

YMMV, all babies vary, babies within the same family vary, so I hope this thread works for you now, but I just want to reassure you that even if nothing works now, it's very likely to work much better in the near future.
posted by telepanda at 6:47 AM on November 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

Is she able to roll on her tummy during tummy time? 4 months sounds like just the right time for rolling & fighting the swaddlers to start. We had some luck swaddling with the arms out during that time period. I agree about removing the pillow, paci and swaddlers in increments as the ideal solution. But I just wanted to say that you could also try doing all 3 at once. You may be surprised how quickly baby adapts. In my experience, the anxiety and stress around these transitions is much harder on me than on baby. My littlest transitioned to crib, no swaddlers, no paci in one night after I had worried about it for weeks. Of course there's still wake-ups, but I think you'll find you'll get through the terrible 4-month transitions and things will go more smoothly. Re: Ferber: I've had luck with Weissbluth/Ferber combination. Sleep training is such a minefield of emotions. Me mail if you'd like support/suggestions for sleep training. I can empathasize 100%!
posted by areaperson at 8:32 AM on November 23, 2015

I can only echo that if you're going to do Ferber, stick with it. Be consistent. We weren't -- and it was horrible, we just had months of crying, and then one of us would say, but what if she's in pain? And go get her, and ruin it. We just Could Not Take It and it amounted to a lot of crying and regret (I still cringe thinking about it and she's a toddler now.) The one thing that worked for us was The Sleep Lady book -- where you don't leave the kid alone, but shush her next to the bed -- but that's probably better for an older baby. And to be honest, our daughter still goes through regressions (she's pretty much in one now -- aargh).

And before you do sleep training, know something that everyone else seemed to know: you can't just do it once! I thought, ok, three days of crying, kaboom, kid sleeps all the time. But every time he or she gets sick, or hits a developmental leap, etc., the kid is at risk of ruining those good habits and you have to start all over. So the crying may continue.

So, I'm not anti-Ferber -- I'm anti-inconsistent-Ferber, which is what we were. So really and truly be prepared to go through with it or you'll only cause everyone a lot of anguish.
posted by EtTuHealy at 11:30 AM on November 23, 2015

I loved the paci stuffed animals. They give a bit of heft to the pacifier so it's easier for the baby to maneuver and it doesn't fall out as easily and it's easier for them to find on their own in the crib. Pro-tip: cut the pacifier clip off when you're ready to get of the pacifier, baby now has a lovey to help with the transition. (The look on my two year old's face when we did this was priceless).
posted by bq at 11:33 AM on November 23, 2015

I wrote a similar question a mere 5 months ago, so if you'd like to read the suggestions there and my loooong recap once we'd finally gotten through the process, you can find it under my user name.

Having come out the other side into the amazing world of sleeping at night, I am a huge fan of Ferber, but I absolutely understand that not everyone feels that way. My only suggestion is that if you *do* decide to follow Ferber, go ahead a get rid of all the props at once! Our son's sleep "routine" (repeated 6-7 times per night at the worst of it!) was a ridiculous litany of props: nurse to near-sleep,then swaddle, then rock, then finally lay down fully asleep and UNswaddle (because he needed the swaddle to fall asleep, but once actually asleep he would roll around in it and get terrifyingly tangled) -- I thought it would be a horrible change for him to have all that taken away, but the first night he cried for 18 minutes and fell happily asleep. I think change is change and will always elicit some crying, so you might as well make one big change instead of having to do a succession of smaller ones, which just drags the crying out over a longer period of time.

All the best, no matter what you end up doing! I remember the sleepless nights, as well as all the self-doubt that comes with them. As a very happy addendum to my story, our little guy continued to get better and better in the weeks after sleep training and now very reliably goes down for naps with no fuss and sleeps for a blissfully uninterrupted 11.5 hours per night. The goodness will come! Hang in there!
posted by TheLittlestRobot at 1:30 PM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Every kid is different, and the best advice I ever got was to parent the kid you have, not the one you read about. Listen to her signals as best you can.

Here's what happened with us: my son didn't sleep for his entire 4th month of life. At that point it was nearing Christmas and I needed a few days to run errands and stuff, so I hired a nanny for 3 consecutive days. She had 20 years of parenting/nannying experience. I described our routines, and wished her luck. At the end of her first day, I asked if there was anything she could think of that might help him sleep. She said yes.

1. He was ready to go from 3 naps to 2. He was getting too much daytime sleep, and that's why he didn't sleep well at night.

2. He was under-stimulated. "This is an outdoor kid." She recommended going on an hour-long walk before each daytime nap, to tire him out.

3. He was ready to learn to fall asleep by himself. She knew because he would fall asleep in our arms and then startle awake when we put him down. Then it was harder to get back to sleep because even 10 minutes of arm napping could sabotage real sleep. He needed to be calmed in our arms, and placed in the crib awake.

The next day we tried it her way, and he slept and slept and slept! He's been a good sleeper ever since. He never cried for more than 15 minutes. (Agonizing 15 minutes!) Yep, we were doing it wrong.

Good luck to you and your whole family!
posted by nadise at 9:44 PM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah, and the Russian double-swaddle for the win!
posted by nadise at 9:48 PM on November 23, 2015

I think you might be building it up in your mind too much, and I totally sympathize, because I've had the same feelings as a sleep deprived new mom (my newest arrival is only 10 months now!).

I agree with the point that if you're going to do something that's going to cause crying then rip the Band-Aid off and do it all at once. But you don't have to get rid of the swaddle yet if baby is not rolling. Good news, within a couple of months, your baby will be able to have arms out of their sleep sack, and be able to *replace her own paci!* And that is a great day in parenting. But if you want to get rid of it, that's fine too and better for her dental future.

I think before you worry about what happens in the wee hours, you should decide if you want to do Ferber and then just give it a shot. The official method involves graduated checkins that start short and get longer and longer (rather than just doing every 5 minutes). Eventually the baby just gets worn out or decides going to sleep is an easier option. I've heard of so many people for whom it only took 15-30 minutes and they had huge regret that they did not do it sooner, even though it's a very hard 15-30 minutes (I recommend you leave the house and have husband do it if he doesn't mind hearing her cry as much). I sleep trained my daughter at 4.5 months and she ended up crying on the first night for 3 hours, and I don't think I've ever heard of a baby going longer than that, although I believe it could happen I think it's probably a pretty rare occurrence. And I wasn't really getting any less sleep that way than I was getting up every 1-2 hours, which truly still involved plenty of crying anyway. And the crying decreased every day for about 4-5 days until it was 15 minutes, and she started sleeping 14 hours a night and being incredibly happy every morning because she was SO well rested, and life got infinitely better.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 10:56 PM on November 23, 2015