4 month olds not sleeping..

Our twins are now 4 months old and for the past two weeks will not nap for longer than 30 minutes in the day and will not sleep longer than 1 hour and a half during the night. We start trying to get them to sleep at around 7:30 but they don't usually actually fall asleep until 8:30 or 9. Sometime one will fall asleep for the first few hours but the other will wake them up with their crying. From around 2 months to just about two weeks ago they would sleep for the first 5-6 hours without waking then 3-5 after that. Last night they woke every hour from 1am-7am. My fiance and I have not slept at all, we are desperate. How can we get them to fall asleep better and stay asleep at night and to take longer naps during the day? They have been so fussy lately and I know they must be exhausted because we sure are.

 

Any chance they are starting teething? That always really messed with my kids' sleep. Maybe a little bit of tylenol would help?

 

It could be a growth spurt, too. My 4 month old singleton barely naps during the day, but he's been like that for a couple months now. He sleeps through the night most of the time, sometimes he'll wake up once.

 

Have you read the Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child book - if not, I would definitely recommend it! A lot of the Moms on here suggest it and follow it like a bible!

Firstly, I would try bringing their bedtime earlier, by 20 minutes every day. If they're taking so long to fall asleep, the earlier you put them to bed, the earlier they will go to sleep. The more sleep they get at night, the better they will sleep at naps and vice versa.. Sleep begets sleep. 7.30 is just too late for bed at this age. By putting them to bed earlier, you're at least giving them an extra hour at the front of the night sleep - you'll be amazed at the difference this makes! I was.

It's at this age, I encountered a lot of problems with nap duration.. I ended up separating at naps to work on them better. I would suggest going in just before they wake at 30 minutes and trying to soothe back to sleep - it's usually just their light sleep cycle they are switching through and waking up not knowing how to go back to sleep.

Are you still swaddling? I found this helpful but we had to stop at this age because it was too hot and it's often their jerky movement waking them up, you need to be on the ready to soothe them back to sleep and eventually they will learn to do this on their own.

The best piece advice I have though, is to be consistent every time and try it for at least a week before vetoing it - yes it takes that long, sometimes longer!...

Hope you get some sleep soon GL!

 

Thanks for all the replies! I am thinking it may have been a growth spurt because they have been sleeping much better the last few days. We did start putting them to bed at 6:30 now rather than 7:30 and seems to be working. We do not swaddle anymore and haven't since they were about 2 months old because they can break a swaddle very easily. (they are strong little guys!) I am definitely going to purchase the book you mentioned though and hope I can get some ideas on making their sleep last longer. Thank you!