4 months – On An Even Kiel

Officially out of the newborn months now! I think the biggest sign that we’re out of the “fourth trimester” is that Berend’s “schedule” is becoming a little more regular finally. But I know from last time around that that will only last a few weeks haha.

Age: 4 months on 15 September 2018
Weight: about 15 lbs 10 oz (16 lbs 2 oz on 24 Sept)
Height: about 26″ (26.25″ on 24 Sept)
Teeth: none
Clothing Size: 6 months & 6-9 months
Diaper Size: size 2 in disposable and one size in cloth
Milestones: Discovering his feet (and trying to get them into his mouth), weaning from the swaddle for sleep, moving out of our room and his bassinet and into his own room and his crib, rolling from back to tummy a couple of times…accidentally haha, some new sounds (ah-goo and ohhhh are the favorites).

Likes: Talking to Mama (he’s very chatty), sucking/mouthing anything that comes near his mouth, Dada coming home (big smiles!), watching the TV, being walked around, baths, sitting supported, standing supported, anytime someone new talks to him, his Zippadee Zip (thanks, Kate!), crinkly toys, fake nursing, being outside

Talking with Mama on the couch

Attacking the crinkly butterfly

Outside at the playground with Mimi

Dislikes: Being tired, being hungry, being held laying back, diaper changes at night, when toys don’t do what he wants, his play mat, seeing Mama walk away, the car seat (in the car & in the stroller)

Sleeping: Well, it’s been another rough month in the sleep department. My mom came back for a couple of weeks right after Berend turned 3 months old which helped me catch up on sleep again. Then Andrew came home from SERE a couple of days after she left. So thankfully I wasn’t on my own for too long being so sleep deprived.

Berend’s total amount of sleep went down again this month… to an average of 13 total hours in a day. Lots of broken naps and nighttime wake-ups. I also started bedsharing out of desperation this month (same thing happened with Gerrit at this age).
Shortly after Berend turned 3 months old, I started putting him down for naps in his crib instead of in the bassinet. Naps ranged from 20 minutes long to 3 (broken) hours long. Most days he took 4 naps, although if he took long naps, he’d only get 3, and if he only catnapped he would get 5 naps. His wake time between naps was usually about 1.5 hours. Some days he nursed to sleep for naps, and others he refused to nurse and I had to bounce him around to get hims to sleep. He started off the month napping swaddled, but by the time he turned 4 months he was napping in his Zippadee Zip sleeping bag.

After Andrew came home (and hung up darkening curtains in Berend’s bedroom), I moved Berend into his room to sleep at night. I was hoping he would sleep more comfortably on the crib mattress vs the thin pad in the bassinet. He was also getting pretty big for the bassinet. My other thought was that he might sleep more soundly not hearing sounds in our room (me crawling back into bed, the bathroom door, Gerrit coming in at 4am, Andrew occasionally snoring). It didn’t seem to help much though: Berend still woke up a LOT at night. His longest stretch of sleep this month was 4 hours, and it only happened once. Usually he was up every 30 min to 2 hours all night long.

After 2am, Berend would get really restless and hard to resettle. By 5 or 6 in the morning, I would be exhausted and frustrated from going back and forth every 10 minutes, so I would bring him to bed with me. You would think that this would help! Sleeping with me did help Berend sleep longer (vs waking every 10 minutes), but he was still waking hourly screaming. It didn’t matter then that he was laying with me; I had to get out of bed and bounce him back to sleep, then carefully crawl back into bed holding him to keep him asleep. Overall bedsharing does get me more sleep, but it’s not something I want to do all night long.

Eating: I’m still exclusively breastfeeding Berend. He became very easily distracted this month, so most feedings happened before naps and at night. During the day, Berend would only nurse for a minute or two at a time if I tried nursing in the living room. If we were in his room preparing for a nap, he was more likely to fall asleep nursing and nurse for at least 5 minutes. He generally nurses every 2-2.5 hours throughout the day, even interrupting a nap to nurse. Once in awhile I can nurse him when he wakes from a nap, and he’ll go back to sleep for another little nap. Since Berend doesn’t nurse well in the living room, Andrew says it seems like he never eats. Between his short nursing sessions and almost entirely nursing right before naps, I can definitely see how it may appear that way!

Mommy Update: Eh, it was another rough month here. I haven’t been getting enough sleep, and self-care has been low on my list of priorities. I shower regularly and brush my teeth twice a day, and that’s about as good as it gets right now. My hair is always in a messy bun, I never have makeup on, and I consider it a win if I have actual shorts on instead of elastic waist ones.

Postpartum issues might be starting to calm down. My skin isn’t breaking out as badly, and I think my hair loss is slowing down. Andrew can’t believe I still have hair on my head with how much has been coming out. I feel like my cravings for sweets and carbs are calming down too. I guess I’ll have to stop visiting the ice cream section of the commissary now.

I do try to have some alone time every night before I go to bed. Sometimes it’s pretty brief between my trips up and down the stairs to try to resettle Berend, but having a glass of wine and watching a little TV by myself helps me feel like I’m not just a mom. I haven’t really gotten back into any of my hobbies yet, but I want to get back into crocheting soon now that the carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms from pregnancy have gone away.

Memorable Events: Another visit from Mimi! I basically begged my mom to come back while Andrew was away. I was so happy to have help and company again!

Gerrit starting preschool! He only goes twice a week for 4 hours a day, but those days mean a nap for me when Berend naps plus one-on-one time for Berend. The bad part is that Berend still really doesn’t do well in the car. Having to go back and forth multiple times on Tuesdays and Thursdays are rough. Plus it can mean that first nap of the day happens late (overtired B = very cranky B) and that I occasionally have to wake him from a nap to go pick up Gerrit. Hoping this gets easier as the year goes on.

Andrew coming home! After 5 weeks away, we were all really looking forward to his return. I was definitely glad to not be parenting alone anymore, Gerrit was thrilled to see him, and Berend was all smiles too!

Berend moving into his own room. Mixed feeling here for sure. That first night in his own room was tough for me… and him. With how much he was/is waking, I thought putting him in his own space would mean he wouldn’t be woken by us as much. I also didn’t want him waking Andrew up all night.

It’s hard to say if it really helped at all, but it’s one transition out of the way now. Plus he’s just across the hall (versus across the house like Gerrit was at this age). And I like having a glider to nurse him in instead of our bed now that Andrew is home. Fingers crossed that he starts sleeping better in his room once this sleep regression is behind him.

September photo of Berend:

And the brother photo which is becoming a usual thing:

Berend, you are such a fun little guy! You are quick to smile whenever one of us is giving you attention, and you’re SO close to giving us a giggle. We love your chubby thighs and kissable cheeks. You love when anyone talks to you when we’re out and about, and you give them big smiles too. You are so eager to be mobile, and we think you might be advanced in this department solely so you can go play with your big brother! We love you so much, little bear, and we are enjoying every new thing you learn each day!

Yes, we are definitely going through the 4 month sleep ~~regression~~ torture. I had never heard of this whole sleep regression thing until I had a baby and started researching about baby sleep. I was dreading its arrival, and now it is here.

First of all, if you have kids and are thinking, 4 month sleep regression? I don’t remember so-and-so going through that. then you are very lucky. Some kids have a few weeks of slightly disrupted sleep so parents might barely notice it. Others, like mine, use it as a way to test his already stressed out parents. 🙂 I will admit that we were falling into some bad habits before we hit this stage: rocking/patting/nursing to sleep and bed-sharing being the big ones. Not that there is anything wrong with any of these! When I read The Baby Sleep Book by the Sears family, one thing really stood out to me: If you resent it, change it. And when I was reading the book, I really wasn’t resenting any of the things we were doing at the time. But a month later? Resentment is setting in.

Here’s what we are dealing with: Naps have been quite short. 30-45 minutes most of the time. Because Gerrit’s naps are short, he should be getting 4 or 5 of them, I think. But he will take 3 naps and then fight me on that 4th nap. I think he fights so hard on that last nap because he’s already overtired from the previous short naps. So after a day of poor napping, I decide he needs an early bedtime. So we move into the bedtime routine: bath, book, boob, bed. Often he’s so tired that he conks out right away. But then the fun begins. He will wake up 40-45 minutes after he first falls asleep. When he falls back to sleep, we try to get him back in his bed. Sometimes he stays asleep (but wakes up 5 minutes later), but often his eyes pop open and it’s back to square one. So we play this game until 11pm or so when Andrew & I are just tired of it. So we get ready for bed, I pick up the fussing Gerrit, and we all go to bed. Gerrit almost instantly falls asleep then. A little bit later, Andrew falls asleep. And then I lay there awake until 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning. Then there are several night wakings by Gerrit, although I never let him fully wake up. I just open up my top so he can nurse. Sometimes he seems to take a good feeding, other times he’s just nursing back to sleep. But I feel like I’m looking at the clock every 1-2 hours, so I’m not getting quality sleep. Gerrit is up for the day between 7:30 and 8:30. And then the cycle begins again.

I don’t think this setback in his sleep would bother me as much if he hadn’t had those two good nights of sleep. I really thought we were on to something! But when he regressed, I was in tears. Literally. One of those nights, I was sitting on the bed sobbing while rocking a screaming baby. I knew it was affecting my sleep too. Not just sharing the bed with a baby, but me not being able to fall asleep. I think the combination of my sleep deprivation and my building anxiety was making it impossible for me to settle down and relax enough to sleep.

After nearly a week of constantly helping Gerrit get back to sleep, I contacted a local sleep consultant. She offers free 15-minute phone consults to kind of evaluate what’s going on and offer some basic advice. She told me things that I already knew: Gerrit is going through the 4 month sleep regression as well as a big cognitive growth spurt (Wonder Week 19). Her main advice was to keep bed-sharing for right now. She said it was important that we were all getting sleep. Basically, just to hang out in survival mode and see if he gets back on track in a few weeks.

It has still been hard on us. Andrew & I spend most evenings going back and forth trying to get Gerrit to sleep on his own. It definitely causes some tension, because neither of us know what to do to help Gerrit. I’ve gotten advice from family and several friends (I appreciate it, ladies!), but I think I make things worse by trying to implement different techniques all the time. 😦

So now I’m back to tracking Gerrit’s sleep. I really just want to see how much sleep he’s actually getting on a daily basis. In my mind, it just doesn’t seem like it could be enough, so I’m hoping I’m wrong. After day #1 it looks like he is roughly getting 12 hours of sleep a day. Seems a bit on the low side, but the average for his age is 11-14 hours a day. Part of me thinks I should be relieved that he’s in “the window,” but then there’s part of me that worries that maybe that amount of sleep isn’t enough for him.

We are really trying to encourage Gerrit to go to sleep “drowsy but awake.” It’s supposed to teach him to self-sooth rather than need one of us to help him go back to sleep through rocking or nursing. He does better with it some nights than others, and he does better with it for morning naps than afternoon ones. I don’t push it in the middle of the night though. Once I’ve gone to sleep for the night, if he doesn’t easily fall back to sleep in his bed, then he comes to bed with me.

I’m really hoping that he will get back on track after this 4 month age. It will roughly coincide with us moving into a house and FINALLY getting settled here in North Carolina, so we’ll see if things get better or worse for awhile. I’d love to start working on getting Gerrit into his own bedroom (after I decorate!), but I don’t want to do that until he’s sleeping better.

So have any of you had a baby with less than desirable sleep patterns? 🙂 I’d love to hear what worked (and didn’t work) for you!

Tag: 4 months

Berend: 4 Months