Little Jade (16 wks today . . . can't believe it!) has been a pretty good sleeper. At the moment though, it's taking me an hour to get her to sleep and it's driving me crazy! Since she has 4 sleeps during the day (wakes up after 1/2 hour, can't resettle her) it's a lot of time to expect my 2 yo to play by himself.
Any ideas? Is this some sort of 4 month phase and I should just stick it out?
I put her down, loosely wrapped with a dummy and leave. She used to just go to sleep. Now she squawks every few minutes and I pop in and put the dummy back in. After half an hour though she is so overtired that I end up rocking her to sleep. I try to put her down before she's asleep, but I think she has become used to being rocked to sleep now.
The other issue is that she will only sleep for one sleep cycle now and it used to be two.
Would love some suggestions. I'm getting so frustrated and am terrified that she is going to be as shocking a sleeper as her brother is!
Maybe try dropping one sleep ie, spread them out during the day. My DD is 19 months and generally I will rock/cuddle her to sleep. Doing so she tends to sleep better and longer.
Good luck it can very tiring and frustrating.
I'm having the same probs with my 4 month old DD. She goes to bed at 7pm, and keeps waking crying every 30 mins or so, she used to sleep from 7pm until 7am only waking for feeds. And don't get me started on daytime naps, it takes me forever to get her to go to sleep.
I'll be interested in hearing any ideas. Perhaps it's a four month thing?
Unfortunately this is very common once a bub turns 4 months old. My DS2 went from being a great sleeper and settler to the absolute opposite when he turned 4 months!
Keep persevering with what you are doing, it will pay off eventually. Re: the napping for one sleep cycle, I'll tell you a trick that worked well for us. My DS2 has 40 minute sleep cycles, he would wake up after one cycle and refuse to go back to sleep. I started clock watching and I would sneak into his room a few minutes before his 40 minutes was up and watch over him. As soon as he stirred slightly (he would squirm, sigh and move his head) I started patting him gently on his tummy. This would help him go into his next sleep cycle without waking. It didn't work EVERY time, but it would work for at least one nap a day. Eventually he started working out how to go back to sleep by himself (when he was around 6 months old).
Grrr, so frustrated
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