We Survived the Four-Month Sleep Regression: Our Experience with a Sleep Consultant and Ferber

Don’t you just hate that well-meaning person who says ‘Sleep when the baby sleeps’? They’ve obviously never had a baby that only sleeps for 30 minutes at a time during the day. As someone who still struggles to nap (maybe I need a sleep consultant?), 30 minutes isn’t enough time to settle, fall asleep, and wake up feeling refreshed. Not to mention, when you only have 30 minutes to yourself, do you really want to spend it sleeping?

The purpose of this article isn’t to tell you sleep consultants or sleep training is a good or bad thing. I’ve come across many questions on message boards, social media groups, and in conversations with other parents about how experiences with sleep training and sleep consultants went. So, I’m here to share my own story.

When our son was born, we heard a lot about sleep regressions, and it made us nervous. The first big one was the infamous four-month sleep regression. At three months old, his daytime sleep was awful — catnapping anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes — but at night, he slept great, waking up just twice for feeds. Then, we took him for his four-month vaccinations, and that night was his first bad night for the next two months. He woke up multiple times, and resettling him was tough. We thought it was just a side effect of the vaccines, but as the days, and then weeks went on, we realised we might actually be in the four-month sleep regression we had heard so much about.

We did some research, got a few opinions, and read articles saying the regression would likely end in two to six weeks. So, we sat back and counted down the weeks, continuing our current habits of rocking him to sleep and feeding him back to sleep when he woke up. Eight weeks later, we were exhausted. We had just moved into our new house, my husband was on parental leave, but dealing with house-related issues, and my son’s sleep was worse than ever. It now took me up to 45 minutes to get him to sleep, and he screamed and pulled my hair every time I tried to rock him. I was going to bed at 8:30 pm, and by midnight, he had usually already woken up twice — with six wakeups in total on the worst nights. Daytime naps were just as bad, he was on three naps a day, and each nap took about 45 minutes to get him to sleep, only for him to sleep for 30 minutes or less.

We decided we’d had enough and we wanted to get in touch with a sleep consultant. My biggest fear had always been the cry-it-out method. The thought of leaving him in his cot to cry for an extended period was heartbreaking. We reached out to a couple of sleep consultants, had some phone calls, and finally chose one who claimed to be against the cry-it-out method — I was feeling positive about the whole situation. We were asked to keep a diary of his movements, naps, meals, and play times for a few days. After analysing the diary, the consultant said it appeared that he was becoming overtired and the wake windows we were currently following were too long for him, which likely caused the catnapping and disrupted sleep. (I won’t get into the boring technical details of cortisol levels and being overtired!)

We booked our first official phone call. Throughout the call, there was no mention of the Ferber method or crying it out, but as they explained the process to us, it felt like we were essentially being introduced to a version of the cry-it-out method — just without the name. The plan was to establish a bedtime routine, put him in bed drowsy, but not asleep, tell him we loved him, and then check on him at intervals that gradually increased until he fell asleep. I wasn’t happy with the idea, but by this point, we’d already paid for our package and we needed to do something so we could all sleep again. I had to admit, I did feel better about the fact that we were allowed to check in on him and I told myself it would be ok.

Night one arrived. Our son had a terrible afternoon and skipped his last nap of the day entirely. We had a great bedtime routine in place, but after talking to our sleep consultant to tell them he had skipped his final nap, we were told we needed to get him in for his night sleep ASAP because he was already overtired and sleep was going to be difficult. I felt awful that my bedtime routine was now going to be rushed and the event that we had been dreading was now coming up sooner than planned. We quickly got him bathed and fed and then said goodnight. We put him in his cot, told him we loved him and would check on him and then left……and that’s when the crying began. It took him one hour and 10 minutes to fall asleep that night, he cried for that whole time and I sat on the lounge and cried along with him. We started by checking in at the designated times, but it didn’t help, I think it might have made things worse because he cried more when you went in there and then left without bringing him with you. We had multiple calls and texts with the sleep consultant over that hour as they talked us through it and supported us by telling us we were doing the right thing. The sleep consultant eventually told us to stop checking in on him as it wasn’t helping and all we could do was sit and listen to him cry. We were now officially in cry-it-out territory. I remember the feeling of relief that finally came over us when he fell asleep that night. Once he was asleep, he slept through the night, apart from waking up for one feed, which was normal for him at that age. That evening was our roughest, the next night, he was asleep after 10 minutes of crying and the following nights after that were about the same.

That night, we thought we had made it through our toughest challenge yet, but the real test was yet to come. Stay tuned for Part two, where I’ll share how we began trusting our own advice and finding a new rhythm that worked for us.