Monday, March 02, 2009

4 month sleep regression, you say?

Well, shut me up and call me a smug daftie as Hugh is now waking about 4 or 5 times a night to feed and his naps have become a battle. I don't regret dropping the dummy (soother / pacifier). Not for a minute. But I found this website / blog - www.askmoxie.org and it's a consolation to my tired eyes.

Readers, you know I can get too 'heady' and tie myself in knots trying to follow 'best practice' from whatever baby book I am reading. I have just about given up with the Baby Whisperer. There are so many rules that seem unfair to me - eg. feed only every 4 hours (at 4 months). Blimey, I need to eat every 2 or 3 hours, so call me a hypocrite. All the rules make me doubt myself. Pah.

The Moxie blog pointed out that there is a recognised '4 month sleep regression' associated with leaps in development. Baby brains are so busy developing, they find it hard to shut down for sleep.

So here you find us, Mr Hugh watching BBC news and gurgling in a bouncy chair. Me sitting in my dressing gown, sleep deprived and reporting from the front line of the babydom trenches. Ah well, it's a phase, a phase, I say. A bit like life.

Ah, I just had a phone call from a dear friend who has a young baby too. It's good to bond over all the minutiae. She said her bambino followed the same patterns - staying awake most of the day in one phase about this age. Now she's surfing the teething wave. We had the rant about babies being baffling, exhausting and amazing, and then I resolved to follow her in 'going with the flow', whatever that means. It sounds simple...

-C

3 comments:

Rachel Fox said...

It can be a bit swings and roundabouts I find (apt in so many ways). You might lose on the early sleepless nights but then you might well win on the teething (and barely notice it). Tiny fingers crossed!

Also I remember being told that of course the baby's feed is their food and their drink so they might need it more often than we expect a person to need a meal. But then maybe you've already read that somewhere!
x

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry to hear it is so hard. Since suffering from CFS myself, I can relate to your experience of sleep deprivation.

I guess I can't be a lot of help, but I keep my fingers crossed that it's gonna be better soon.

Anonymous said...

I'm going through the 4 month sleep regression at the moment so found your blog while googling about for more info/consolation/advice/mutual support.

Glad to read that it is not just my little cherub.