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It's probably the dreaded 4 month sleep regression. Having said that, if she falls asleep in your arms easily, would she sleep through the night next to you? Might be easier than being a mombie!

Also, I'm pretty concerned about the babysitter having her sleep on the couch. I've seen some very bad outcomes from babies who roll into the back of the couch and suffocate or roll off the front edge. It would be better even if baby was just on the floor. I'd definitely talk to them about that!

OK, I'll stop being nosy! I feel your pain as our first was a terrible sleeper from 4 months until about 2 years... but we did everything wrong that you could think of. You on the other hand are doing a great job. Don't panic, likely in a week or two your baby will be back to sleeping through the night!

You poor thing. That's never a fun phase. For the sake of my own sanity, I did whatever it took to get her to sleep. If that meant that I had to give her a bottle before she would go to sleep (instead of putting her in the crib and letting her cry), I would do that. If she needed to sleep next to me, I did it. If the swing would keep her sleeping, sold!

Once I got her back to sleeping for longer periods, then I worked on getting her to sleep on her own.

Oh my goodness, that sounds awful and you must be exhausted :(. My daughter was similar and could only fall asleep in my arms and usually woke up screaming if I tried to put her in her own bed. So I ended up co-sleeping for the first 4 months. Which means I actually didn't sleep well, for fear my husband or I would hurt her while in bed. At first I didn't want to let her cry it out either, but by 4 months I was exhausted and desperate. I ended up browsing the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child (they have a summary at the end of each chapter for tired parents) and decided to try sleep training. My husband hated hearing her cry, but he was getting more sleep than I was at the time. I had to wait until he was out of town (with his ok) to really start the sleep training. I started putting my daughter down drowsy-but-awake, which she did NOT like. It took almost 3 weeks, but she finally ended up able to fall asleep on her own. Letting her cry was so so painful, but since that time she falls asleep for naps and bedtime so well that I think it was worth it (she is 1 year old now). During sleep training the longest she cried was 2 hours.. but then she fell asleep after.

I wouldn't worry about fixing her naps for now. I focused on my girl's night sleep before trying to get her day sleep in order.

Another thing that really helped us with the crying was Dr. Harvey Karp's 5 S's: swaddle, side position, shushing, swinging, and sucking. Watching YouTube vids on this method helped me (I didn't know I had to "shush" so loud.. but daughter loved this).

Good luck with this. Hang in there, remember you are an awesome mother for thinking about your baby's sleep. Meanwhile, use caffeine as needed (unless you're BF-ing like I was :().

We had to slowly do a CIO thing.

First to get her from falling asleep while eating to falling asleep while being held. She would cry in my husbands arms for a few minutes until he could calm her down and rock her to sleep. She wanted to nurse to sleep but we stopped letting her.

Then we worked to put her to sleep in her bed without being held. This was the hardest part. We pretty much had to go cold turkey and just stop picking her up out of the crib all together. We would calmly put her down in the crib and put our hand on her back and rock her in the crib or rub her back until she feel asleep.

Then we had to get her to fall asleep on her own in her crib without us there. This was kinda combined with the last step. If she would stand up in her crib while we were trying to rub her back, we would walk out of the room (aka, bad behavior gets negative reaction, good behavior of laying down, got good reaction of us rubbing her back). We would let her cry for about 10 minutes and go back in there and lay her down and rub her back again.

Hope that maybe helps some! We did all this from about 8-10 months on

We don't do CIO, we co-sleep, and I don't generally have a problem with nursing to sleep, just to let you know where I'm coming from with this advice. At 5 months, we split up the night. I would take the first shift, and my husband would go to bed early. Around 2 am, I would go upstairs and get a few hours while he dealt with wakeups. We didn't do it every night, but those extra hours of sleep helped me function. It gets easier as you get more used to it.