Help! Baby suddenly cries hysterically at bedtime

[claudiaspollen]

My 3.5 month old usually has a very solid routine of 5 naps and sleeps well at night waking up only once to feed. Usually he goes down super easy at bedtime - we have a routine of bath + massage + pjs + feed and cot. He has dropped a nap himself and now he’s doing 4 naps for the past few days (not a great napper usually 20-45 mins) and the past two days he has been crying terribly after bath and pjs. Refuses to eat calmly and just screams. I can see he’s tired but just won’t stop crying and this wasn’t the case before

His schedule:

Wakes up around 6 am
First nap around 8 am
Second nap around 10 am
Third nap around 1 pm
Fourth nap around 4 pm
Bedtime and sleep always between 6:30 - 7 pm

Wake windows on average are 1 h 30/45 mins with the exception of the last one which has become more like 2 or 2.5 h

Am I doing something wrong?

Help. I don’t want this to become a thing and if he’s overtired and I should change something?

 

[bhagofangels]

@claudiaspollen Our guy never slept as well/regularly as what you're describing so I can't speak to your experience exactly, but I will say that our 10 month old has a few times decided something that was previously totally cool or even fun is suddenly torture. Right now it's when my wife changes his diaper. He gets fidgety with me but with her it's full on screaming and thrashing. I've watched her do it and I don't think she's doing anything differently at all, he just hates it. Friends of ours with more/older kids have told us similar stories.

Anyway all that is to say, babies are weird and we'll never know 100% of what's going on in their weird little brains. Keep them safe and be gentle with them and if they really hate it, try changing things up. But you aren't doing anything wrong in the sense that you aren't neglecting them and you're doing your best to respond.

 

[unicornwarrior]

@bhagofangels I completely agree with this. Sometimes kids will decide that something, that they were previously fine with or even loved, is all of a sudden not OK, and it has nothing to do with you. You could also have an early four month sleep regression on your hands.

 

[claudiaspollen]

@bhagofangels Thank you for sharing your experience with me it really helps to know I’m not doing anything wrong! Let’s hope he grows out of it

 

[manofgod25]

@claudiaspollen I had this problem around 3 months mark. She would cry hysterically every time I tried to put her down for a nap/bed. I tried moving around our routine or starting it earlier/later, but nothing helped. As soon as she felt me trying to get her to sleep she would just start wailing. It took 10-15 minutes of rocking/singing/pacifier to get her to sleep.

It was a phase and she grew out of it. I agree with the other commenters… babies are weird. Don’t worry. It will pass soon I’m sure.

 

[bensoninabox]

@claudiaspollen We had this happen randomly sometimes where she’d go through phases of BIG objection to what used to be a good routine. We didn’t change anything, and it would pass as a phase. You can shift times around if you’d like to see if it helps, but imo these things just happen sometimes