4 Month Old Baby Girl Has Sleep issue...........help

Hi, I have a 21 month old son. He had the same issues, except he also had colic. I got no sleep. With her in your room has nothing really to do with it, my son was in my room until he was 6 months old. To be honest you kinda have to deal with it until she gets a pattern down and feels better. My son was up almost every 2 hours. It is frustrating I know. You could prop the crib a little (hardly at all). Just put a blanket under the mattress where her head goes. I did that too. That is suppose to help with the acid reflux, the doctors and specialist told me to do that. I know it gets tiring, but good luck. My son started sleeping through the night when he was 15 months old.

My almost 6 month old son does the same thing when he sleeps. It;s a new thing for him too, I only got 1 week of sleeping through the night then he started waking multiple times (crying while sleeping) during the night. It seems it's always somethign intrrupting sleep, milestones, teething, ect.

I think it's just the stage she's at. It will be tiring, but it should pass.

If she is crying in her sleep it could be teething, a cold, or an ear infection. If she checks out physically then the way to deal with night time waking (at least what worked for my boys) was to make the night time contact minimal (no talking, no lights, no looking into her eyes - look away). That helped my boys learn that night time was not fun time and I just made up for the "cold" treatment during the day with lots of extra hugs and kisses.
Good Luck!

At 4 months, shei s going through a mega growth spurt, and its the longest and most trying one. She WILL Be more hungry at night ,so if she wakes, feed her. She'll get over it, but just go with her cues. She'll be consuming more calories during a growth spurt that she can't all consume during the day, her body needs that extra at night during hte growth spurt. It'll stop, its just a spurt. GIve it a couple weeks and she should be back to sleeping normally again.

My first baby didn't sleep through the night until we moved him out of our room at 6 months. He's been a pretty sound sleeper ever since.
The second baby is a light sleeper but will usually go back to sleep on his own or with a water bottle (he's almost a year old).
Both boys would wake up more right before a growth spurt when their appetites increased. It could be she's hungry. I found that if we fed them a few times in the hour or 2 before bedtime they slept better. Also, at 4 months she may be ready to start eating food. You should talk to your pediatrician about what is OK to feed her.

Oh, I feel for you! Both of my sons had reflux. My oldest did not take medication and his sleep habits sound EXACTLY like your daughter's. He kept that up until he was about 10 months old. My youngest was put on medication very young and stayed on it until he was almost a year, even though a lot of the signs improved as he got older, it was still an issue. Our pediatrician(a different one than we had at the time my oldest was a baby)said that the waking is a telltale sign of the reflux. When they lie down all the acid starts to come up and burn. So they may be fine while awake, but as they sleep they have a lot of discomfort. If your daughter is not on medication or has been taken off I would talk with your doctor about what could be done to help her. It seems like reflux could still be your primary issue.

Both my sons had reflux, and my youngest went through the EXACT same thing at 4 months. At that time most babies experience a major growth and developmental spurt, which totally disrupts sleep. (There's a great book at the library called Wonder Weeks which explains those times in depth.) Then I think the reflux makes things worse. But, it does tend to get better on its own, usually within a couple of weeks.

I've recommended this book so many times on this website people are probably tired of hearing about it, but I can't recommend enough the book, "Sleepless in America," and its author, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. She lives in Eagan and has written several nationally-renowned child development books. She has a website: www.parentchildhelp.com, she teaches classes in the metro area and she does in-home consultations. She helped my older son tremendously with his sleep issues (still working on the younger one, but not Mary's fault!). Good luck!

Have you ever considered taking your baby to see a chiropractor that works with kids and babies? This might be of dramatic help both for the reflux AND the sleeping problems! We have personally had some great results with chiropractic and our daughters. Good luck!

Here's an excerpt I found on a reflux forum; posted by another real life mom:

Our daughter was diagnosed with reflux when she was around six weeks old and was put on Zantac. Various people recommended we take her to see a chiropractor. Neither my partner or I had had any experience with chiropractors, so we were skeptical and didn't understand why people would be recommending this for her reflux. I mentioned the diagnosis and suggestion to our TMJ dentist and he agreed it would be very helpful. He explained that the Vegas nerve which controls the esophagal sphincter runs close to the cervical vertebrae. Sometimes the vertebrae can get out of place during a long or difficult labor (which I had) ! and this can effect the esophagal sphincter such that stomach acid will back up into the throat. At the first appt. the chiropractor examined her and found that one of her cervical vertebrae was indeed out of place. There was a huge improvement after just one appointment. We continued to take her to weekly appointments until she no longer needed adjustments. Within a few months of starting chiropractic we were able to reduce the amount of Zantac she was taking by half. By the time she was seven months old she was off Zantac entirely. Our pediatrician had never heard of this before and was really quite amazed. Our daughter is now 15 months and has no problems at all. ~md