Four Month Check Up and More Sleep Struggles

Sophia had her four month check-up last week and did beautifully. She is a long and lean little girl. She's 25.5 inches long, which is the 90th percentile for 4 month-olds, and the 50th percentile for 7 month-olds! She's only 12 pounds, 8 ounces, though - the 17th percentile. She's a long, lean little girl. Her weight percentile has dropped since her 2 month check, but is consistent with her earlier weight checks, so we're not too worried, but will do an informal weight check in a month to make sure she's not falling further off the curve. I got nervous at first, with all our problems in the beginning, but DH assured me that there was no reason to be concerned.

Otherwise, everything checked out great. We're still a little concerned with her social skills. She smiles very little and isn't super interactive, but she does smile occasionally and interact with others, so it's not a huge concern yet. We just keep watching and encouraging her. She handled her shots like a trooper.

As for our sleep struggles - they continue. She's doing great at night and is no longer waking up multiple times. She still has trouble getting to sleep a lot of times, but it's getting better. Nap time is still a struggle, but I think it's getting better. I've decided to ditch everything from Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, because it was making me crazy. He basically was saying that you have to catch a magical moment of sleepiness in order to get the baby to sleep. Maybe other babies flash neon signs or something, but I can't find any such clues for our little girl.

Ferber's book makes more sense for our family and we're making some progress. he basically says that you decide what you want the schedule to be (allowing for developmental sleep needs) and just do it. Put them down when you want nap time to be, and they'll eventually adjust their rhythms to your schedule. To start, he suggested pushing things a little later than you expect to make sure the child is sufficiently tired. So that's what we've been doing and we've seen some marked progress.

She's still inconsistent - taking 20 minute naps sometimes and an hour and a half at others, but I think we're on our way, which makes me super duper happy. I'm in a much better mood and even DH commented that we were both in much better spirits. I hope it continues to get better and I don't have to endure 20 minutes or more of crying for every nap. It's hard on a mama to listen to that, but seeing her happy and playful after a good nap makes it worthwhile. She clearly was overtired before. And I'm not making myself crazy trying to identify her perfect sleep time and just making myself crazy and feeling like a bad mom because I couldn't find it.