4 month old

I’m posting this with the following goals in mind:
-earlier bedtime (earlier rise time as well)
-better naps (more consistency)
-more consistent long stretches at night
We follow sweet spot and it seems to usually be accurate except for night time. I just added the scheduler today. 

Our girl has always been decent at night time sleeping. I nurse her to sleep, and typically nurse her back to sleep when she wakes up. Recently, if it has been less than 3 hours at night time I try to bounce her to sleep first as I’m sure she just wants comfort and not food. She was in her bedside bassinet since birth, and we usually didn’t have any transfer issues. If we did, we could try again in a few minutes after boob or bouncing. We moved the bassinet to the nursery at around the 3 month mark (maybe a little later) as my husband and dogs were noisy and making her stir, and sometimes I was as well (super creaky bed). She didn’t even seem to notice or care and I began to sleep better as well. At about the 3.5 month mark, we switched to her crib, as we noticed when traveling she slept better in the pack and play with more room. I definitely think this helped her. She’s always in a good mood when she wakes up in the morning, and usually after naps. If she’s fussy, once I switch her brown noise to birds she stops as she knows that means I’m coming soon. 


We almost always contact nap, usually in a wrap or baby carrier. For the past month or so, I have been doing her first nap of the day in her own bed, same as night time, where I’ll nurse her to sleep then transfer her. She usually does fine with transfers. If she wakes during them, about half the time she fusses enough to where I pick her up, the others she’ll kind of stretch and then close her eyes and go back to sleep. The past 2 weeks I’ve been doing the same with 3rd nap of the day. 3rd nap of the day sometimes we have transfer issues and I end up bouncing her back to sleep a few times and just holding her. We seemed to think that when she was taking shorter naps throughout the day (20-30 min) she would sleep longer stretches at night. When we soothe and bounce her past that and do 1-2 hour naps (contact) she seems to be up more frequently at night. Especially if this nap is later in the day. She naps fine when we’re out and about holding her, in her carrier in restaurants or shops. She really struggles to in the car or stroller. She did fine as a newborn, but at about 1/1.5 months she stopped. We recently had a really long road trip and she cried/screamed herself to sleep (for 45 min) twice, for 20 min nap. Once she just stared off at her aquarium and closed her eyes then snoozed for 45min/1hour. The other 3/4 naps we had to find a place to pull over for a contact nap. I’ve also dangle fed her twice in the car and that does the trick lol. 

I’ve tried waking her up earlier (not consistently enough) and she is so sleepy that she will not stay awake whether I’m feeding her, holding her, even laying her on the couch next to me. When we try an earlier bed time, she treats it like a nap and is up constantly that night. She seems to do best when going down at 11, and she wants to sleep to or past 9. I’ve been trying to make her get up at 8 more consistently, and I will try to do 7:30 starting tomorrow too. I’m also trying to extend wake windows by changing activities and scenery but she just gets pissed. I will obviously continue to try!I’m wondering if I need to do a harsher shift with trying earlier bedtime and just dealing with whatever happens overnight until she adjusts. 

How else can I support these goals? She will be at daycare and me back to work in a month so I know they will also be working on naps with her, but I don’t want her to be a terror for them. She will also need to be up between 6-7 for daycare. I just think it’s wild that some nights she’s slept 7-9 hours and others she has 1.5-2 hour stretched and false starts. I’m not comfortable with letting her CIO at this point, but am open to letting her fuss for a little here and there. She wont take a pacifier but does enjoy sucking her fingers and her loveys (which I won’t let her sleep with yet).

She is also a reflux baby, which some dietary changes on my part have helped, but it still affects her. More so when she was younger but still now occasionally, her spitting up in the middle of the night wakes her. 50/50 if she goes back to sleep on her own. I feel like this affected some of our habits early on as well because when it was worse, she would just scream if she was flat, so she was held a lot and I would have to hold her upright for 15-30 minutes in the MON after feeding. 

Thank you in advance! I’m posting her summaries with and without feeding as some overlap with sleep as I track it.

4 month old- poor naps and inconsistent night time stretches