Not so smug anymore…

I’ll hold my hands up, so far I’ve been the smug one that had the baby that slept really well in his own cot without a fuss. I say smug, I knew how lucky we were and felt desperately sorry for my friends who were having a much tougher time with their babies, I wasn’t really smug just grateful. Until now.

We’ve had a bedtime routine for weeks and it worked. Bathtime (3 nights a week), nappy change, baby massage, walk into the bedroom singing twinkle twinkle, story on the bed, feed with the MyHummy on, baby into cot to fall asleep. It worked! Then it didn’t. For the last 3 nights Theo has forgotten how to self soothe and does not want to go to sleep at all. He screams and cries and kicks. For the last two nights I sang ‘twinkle twinkle’ to him for twenty minutes with my hand on his chest until he fell asleep. Both nights he slept until 5.30am, fed and then went back to sleep for an hour or so.

Tonight, I’ve sang, talked, played him louder white noise, rocked him, carried him and an hour later he’s still awake. I’ve just had to come downstairs and tag Lee in for a bit. I feel really upset, like I’m letting Theo down. Not just for giving up and getting Lee to go upstairs but because I can’t soothe him, because I have no idea why this sudden change has happened. I feel like a terrible mum.

I know that the four month sleep regression is a thing but I thought that was waking more often, I didn’t think it was not wanting to sleep in the first place. He’s in the thick of leap 4 too but nowhere mentions anything about his sleep being affected with that either.

He’s always struggled with daytime napping, first he just didn’t do it anymore, then he was getting overtired, then he’d only sleep in his pram. I thought I was making progress on getting him to sleep in his cot in the day, he’d done it 50% of the time for a few days but that went out of the window too. Now he fights sleep whatever time of the day it is. Even in his pram I have to take him right round the block screaming until he eventually falls asleep.

I’m sat downstairs listening to my baby cry, feeling tearful and comfort eating mini milk free pecan pies. This is a low point in my parenting experience.

Update: so I lasted downstairs for about 15 minutes. Theo is more worked up than he was when I left, wish I’d stayed upstairs with him and now I feel even worse about it.

Does anyone have any tips or advice for me on this?