4 month wakeful

[crazygame]

I think we are headed into a not so great sleep period and he'll be 4 months on Wednesday. He has been taking forever to go to sleep, napping like shit and waking 2-3 times a night. I also got my first post partum period this weekend, so I am wondering if my supply was affected and he just wants to eat more. Either way, time to drag my tired butt to work. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

[sporklemotion]

We went through a phase where she would sleep for about 5 hours and the be up every 60-90 min. For the rest of the night. Now, she sleeps for longer (8-ish hours), but after that, she's up for about 2 hours each time. She woke up at 3:30 this morning and was still up when I left for work at 6:15. She'll drift off a bit while nursing, but wake up a few minutes later. I'm not sure if this is still the 4 month wakeful (she's almost 5 months), but it's something.
She is chatty and playful, not crying too much.

[Velar Fricative]

To this day, I still have no idea when exactly we experienced the 4MW because she had a two-week period of additional wakeups starting at 3.5 weeks (would nurse right back to sleep each time though, so it was mostly NBD). From 4 to 4.5 months, she started sleeping fine again. Then at 4.5 until 5.5 months when we did Ferber, shit hit the fan. Maybe that entire period from 3.5 months until 5.5 months was the 4MW, I don't know. During the later part, she began waking after every sleep cycle (60 minutes) and became much harder to put to sleep at bedtime (until Ferber, she was never able to fall asleep at bedtime without being nursed and/or rocked).

The 4MW did not affect her nursing, just that she nursed a lot more because of the additional wakeups. It did obliterate my milk stash though so we had to start supplementing at 5 months; the last thing I wanted to do was pump before my own bedtime knowing she could wakeup at any moment. It also did not affect her napping because she was always a shitty napper lol.

[gibbinator]

For 2 or 3 really bad weeks of waking up most nights every 45mins, we survived by bed sharing. Dh was removed to the couch and ds and I slept in our queen. I would just wake up when he started crying and he'd either quickly soothe with a few belly pats or I'd release a boob - which may or may not still have been in use the next time I woke up.
It was really tough and his sleep was pretty terrible for another 2 weeks (although we'd at least get a couple hours in a row). I spent a couple of those "better" nights sleeping on the nursery floor with my arm up through the crib slats on his belly.

Before the 4mw he was sttn in his crib, but his sleep was never the same after. He'd wake up once or twice a night from 6-16 months. For us the start of it also corresponded with distracted daytime nursing.

Thank God I wasn't working too. Hope you get through it quickly.

[Deleted]

We definitely had a wakeful period, it was terrible between 4-6 months. She would be up between 2-3 times a night and it was brutal for me. O would scream awake and just want to be fed, she would go back down pretty quickly after that.

We waited until 7 months and then implemented extinction CIO, which worked for us.

[amandakisser]

We hit it at about 3.5 months, and for us it lasted about five weeks. She would wake up every 90 minutes-2 hours and it was the worst time I've had in my life. I had to let her cry for about 5 minutes one night because I was going crazy, and she put herself back to sleep and slept for about 4 hours. It was pure hell, but I think we were on the more extreme end of normal. Hang in there, it DOES get better.

[soozy87]

I think we are still going through it, or at least we didn't do a good job of correcting bad habits or something. When he turned 3 months he would STTN 3-4 times a week, but then at 4 months that changed to 3-4 wake ups per night and currently at almost 6 months we are normally at 5-8 wake ups per night. I don't really know what we could have done differently or could be doing differently now. I hope it works out better for your family!