The “four month sleep regression” (which is actually more like a time period that starts at three months for some babies and can extend past six months) is a daily discussion in my clinic. So is “false start” sleeping at this age (baby goes to sleep at 7 pm and wakes up an hour later — the baby just doesn’t want to miss out on anything at this point!).
It’s NOT a “regression”! It may be painful and exhausting for parents, but your baby is actually growing up and getting older and progressing, not “regressing.” Your baby will no longer feed like a newborn (i.e. every few hours, only focused on mom’s breast, not interested in the world or looking around at other things and sounds). Your baby will get extremely distracted during the day. Your baby may nurse for very short periods of time.
And when baby nurses less during the day, they wake up at night to feed to make up for the calories they missed during the day!
Many people start feeding babies bottles at this point (citing a “nursing strike”). But this unfortunately messes with normal physiology — if a baby is taking more volume during the day, they may not wake up as much at night. This would be fine (and obviously more ideal to parents) if this didn’t correspond with a time when mom’s hormones are starting to shift and she needs the overnight stimulation from baby to prevent her period from returning (which drops milk production considerably).
The other issue is your baby STILL may wake up at night despite getting all the bottles during the day (and then they are just getting force-fed too many calories in general). This is a tough time period (sleep in general is one of the hardest things about parenting that last for years) and it’s better to focus your efforts on getting help at night, taking shifts with your partner, etc than forcing a baby to feed during the day when the baby is too distracted to do it on their own.
