Oh, that's such hard work!

Around 4 months is often a tough time for babies. Mine is 4 months, and also pretty unsettled, though I think we are now through the worst of it (hopefully).

The reason for this going on is that baby is learning to understand their world in a new way. The unsettled phase is also connected with lots of wonderful things that he or she will learn how to do, like rolling over, holding things and manipulating them with his/her hands, more sophisicated language (babblings, I mean, of course) and so on. You can be sure that there is a reason for all of this, it isn't random, and that your baby will come through this stage with a host of new skills to develop and refine.

A good book about this stuff is called The Wonder Weeks. It explains the usual periods when babies have fussy stages and what is going on in their brain development at the time. The main message is that this is normal, it is healthy (necessary, even, so baby can learn all these new things), and that it won't last.


I think I recall that the book says that the 4-month "wonder week" lasts up to a few weeks in some babies, and that most babies can expect a "sunny patch" by the time they are about 21 weeks old. So things should be better by then for you (for the time being).

I do hope you start to get more sleep soon.