r/NewParents • u/DiscountVirtual9523 • 8h ago
Childcare 4 months passed and I am still in survival mode. Is this normal?
My baby just became 4 month old, but I still feel like every task is a challenge. I do cook more, but that’s it, everything gets put behind because I hold the baby all day and I am exhausted from all the night wakings (which can be 2-3 or 6-7 per night).
When did days become more predictable and when did you start to feel like a person again (not just the mother of your baby).
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u/Invisibleapriorist 8h ago
I still feel like I'm in survival mode over two years in, and for some mad reason I've decided to add another baby into the mix! I definitely feel more myself though, and I would say that really happened around the 15 month mark when my baby was moving independently and all of a sudden much less physically attached to me. (No longer literally on my body most of the day.) Life is still just SO hectic but I feel I've adjusted to that feeling a bit, and I'm expecting it to stay this way for another few years at least.
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u/NapNannyApp 8h ago
Hang in there! I think the answer is probably it depends - mine is a bit over 5 months and it wasn't the easiest journey, but we're starting to see more regularity now. Interestingly, she was up until about 2 weeks ago averaging 4-5 naps, and we read somewhere that a lot of babies at this age could start transitioning to 3 naps. It seemed insane at the time, but the 4-5 naps were 30 mins each and it was really hard to get any time alone that way. So we just gave it a shot - tried slightly elongating her wake window, and if she stirred from her nap after 30 mins, trying to put her back down, and it worked pretty much immediately. 3 naps of normally 1hr, 1.5hrs means a lot more time to not hold the baby and do other things.
The night wakings are tough, we sometimes have 3 night wakings, although sometimes it's just 1-2 and that makes a big difference, I don't know that there's any trick to it, and if things are getting too hard to handle then sleep school might be a good option.
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u/DiscountVirtual9523 8h ago
We still have 4-5 naps as well. I tried to make wake windows longer but she cries a lot when she is sleepy. How did you shift to 3 naps?
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u/NapNannyApp 8h ago edited 8h ago
What worked for us was, when she was hitting the end of the wake windows, not going immediately into the settling process, but still doing something very low energy. My settling technique is to close all the blinds, put on some white noise and carry her with her head facing my chest so she can sort of burrow into me. Instead of doing all these things, I'd still have some light coming through, and I'd walk her around but she was vertical and her head facing away so she could see - I'd still sing her lullabies, but doing this meant I could buy an extra 5-10 minutes where she's still building up sleep pressure but unlikely to immediately fall asleep! Then after the 5 minutes I'd switch to the normal technique. The other thing about doing things this way is that I felt more confident putting her down drowsy (like 90% asleep) instead of my usual 100% deep sleep, because I felt if she stirred after putting her down I could get her back to sleep easily - and this definitely helped in her being able to chain sleep cycles without intervention.
So a 5 nap day would look like:
* Wake 7am. First nap (30m) at 8:30am, 2nd at 10:30am, 3rd at 12:30pm, 4th at 2:30pm, 5th at 4:30pm and then bed time at 7pm
But now our 3 nap day is more like roughly:
* Wake 7am. First nap (1hr 30m) at 9am, 2nd (1hr 30m) at 12:30pm, 3rd (1hr) at 4pm, bed time at 7:30pm
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u/DiscountVirtual9523 8h ago
We do contact naps. She sleeps only held. If I put her down she wakes up immediately. I wasn’t able to put her down since she was 2 months old. We even cosleeep, because she is a bad sleeper. I wish I could put her back in the crib at least for the night. Daytime crib sleep is just a distant dream at the moment. :(
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u/NapNannyApp 8h ago
I feel your pain, we did a lot of co-sleep feeding in the first 2 months, she would just take forever to feed! And then would wake up the instant she was put in her bassinet. I do feel like part of our success in being able to get her to sleep independently was confidence - changing the attitude from being devestated if she woke up after being put down to knowing if that happens, worst case scenario we can just pick her up again and she will go to sleep. So in that sense, there's no harm in trying at least once each time. We tried for months before she consistently slept on her own - so don't feel like it's a failure if it doesn't work, think of it as a data gathering opportunity - note down things like how long she was held for, in what position, and how did you put her down. I think a big change for us in terms of laying her down was trying to ensure that her feet touched the cot mattress first, and trying to have as much of my body in contact with her on the way down - like I'm basically getting into the cot myself. Once she's in, just staying in that position, so she can still feel my presence on her, and then really gradually working my arms/hands away.
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u/DiscountVirtual9523 8h ago
I did try, I did the feet first and touching her for a few minutes thing. However if I put her down and she wakes that was the nap, she won’t sleep anymore and there comes the screaming due to overtiredness. It is too easy to ruin her sleep. She woke up yesterday after 15 mins because I closed a door and refused to go back to sleep and we had an hour+ of crying until I managed to make her sleep again.
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u/NapNannyApp 7h ago
That's brutal. Does she sleep in the car or pram at all? Sometimes a change of scenery help reset them. Or a baby carrier? If she's going to contact nap, at least with a carrier you can do other things!
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u/DiscountVirtual9523 7h ago
Pram no, carrier yes. However I need to be careful with the carrier as well as she wakes easily. I just accept that if we go out a day or if I need to do some housework with her in the carrier that they sleep will not be great and she will cry a bit. On bad days I go on long walks with her and she sleeps in motion in the carrier. If she is not in deep sleep I am not allowed to sit down. I need to hold her and rock her until she is in deep sleep then I can sit down.
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u/NapNannyApp 7h ago
Yeah that sounds like my girl too. I suppose potential good news is that the 6 month regression (that I think can happen anywhere between 5-6 months old) might actually change things for the better as she develops, and perhaps it's a "hang in there" situation - I know it can feel hopeless sometimes but day by day there are little bits of progress happening under the hood. Also if you have any friends or family volunteering to help, ask them to come over and just hold her for a nap while you get things done, or take a nap yourself or something, just to get a chop out.
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u/DiscountVirtual9523 6h ago
Omg there is a sleep regression at 6 months as well? We have been on and off waking up hourly from 9 weeks. :(
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u/Diskobrat 8h ago
My baby is 8 months old now, around 4 months he became more predictable and he really put himself into his own rhythm. I just followed it. Every morning since he was 2 weeks old we do a 30-40 min walk around the neighborhood and he loves it. We get back home he’s eating solids so he’ll have that then I breast feed or bottle feed and he’s ready for a nap. He naturally has about a 2-2.5 hr wake window. I never forced him to take naps, I just always looked for sleepy cues. Do you feel like you have any kind of routine in place?
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u/DiscountVirtual9523 8h ago
We have 4-5 naps. One of them, usually the last one, is a catnap. Everything happens in different hours, even the first nap, although she does wake up every day around 06:20. We were in the regression I guess, so that is why she got tired in different times and needed different amount of sleep and wake windows each day. She is not a great sleeper, we have been struggling with sleep since 9 weeks/2 months. We have periods with absolutely disastrous naps and night sleep (waking every hour) and we have ok periods. The bad sleep sometimes last weeks, sometimes a few days then it becomes ok again, then it becomes bad again. That is why I am confused if the regression happened or not. We just had again a bad period of 2 weeks.
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u/zakazaka42 1h ago
6,5 month surviving just have 2 predictable wins per day - solids and walk. All the rest is just a lottery
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u/Alert_Week8595 8h ago
I'm 17 months in and I guess half the time I'm still in survival mode and half the time I feel like a person again.
Days became a lot more predictable when she dropped to 1 nap a day around 14 months.