Four month sleep regression12/19/2023 ![]() Remember how I mentioned you’re little one might be “falling out of sleep”? We always want to give them a chance to fall back into the next sleep cycle before going in there and helping. If you hear your baby wake up in the night, try to wait around 10 minutes before responding. ![]() Tips to Help Your Baby Get Through the Four-Month Regression Wait Before Responding So that pattern continued until she was 10 months old and something just had to change. ![]() So even after the technical “two weeks” were up, nothing changed – she was now in the habit of stirring, then fully waking, then nursing back to sleep, repeat. The problem was, my baby quickly learned that the only way to get back to sleep in the middle of the night was to nurse. For me, that meant each time my baby woke up, I nursed her and rocked her back to sleep.ĭid she really go from just needing one night feed to needing four or five or six? No! But that was the quickest and easiest way for me to get her back to sleep, so that’s what we did. The reason many families think this regression “lasts forever” is because we enter survival mode – we do whatever we can to just get our baby back to sleep so we can get back to sleep. How long does the four-month regression typically last?Īs a general rule of thumb, sleep regressions typically last around two weeks, and this is true of the four-month sleep regression, too – It might take a solid two weeks or so before your baby’s sleep cycles have fully adjusted. That’s because these adult-like cycles also mean the whole “drowsy but awake” strategy that often works to help get newborns to sleep no longer works! Now “drowsy” is essentially the first step of sleep, as it is for you and me. You rock your baby or feed your baby to sleep per usual, you lay them down, and the moment they touch the crib, their little eyes pop open and you have to start all over again. The four-month regression can also be characterized by what feels like a never-ending bedtime. So the most common signs of the four-month regression are an uptick in night wakings and short naps. (If you want to dig a little more deeply into these different stages of sleep, head here!) What does the four-month sleep regression look like?īecause babies are now adjusting to more time in a lighter stage of sleep, it’s like they keep “falling out of sleep” and need help getting back. This is a big change for babies, as more adult-like sleep cycles means more time in a lighter stage of sleep, which babies aren’t used to. Rather than just having two sleep cycles, they now have four stages of sleep per sleep cycle. Newborn babies’ sleep is underdeveloped, meaning they only have two sleep cycles – they flip flop between a deep sleep and a light sleep.Īround four months of age (it might be a little before or a little after), babies’ sleep starts transitioning into more developed, adult-like sleep cycles. The four-month sleep regression is an actual, physical change that happens to your baby’s sleep. How to help your baby get through the four-month regressionĪnd more! So let’s dive in… What is the four-month sleep regression?.How long the four-month sleep regression usually lasts.Signs your baby is experiencing the four-month regression.What the four-month sleep regression is and why it happens.So in this post, I am going to share with you what I wish I had known about the four-month sleep regression a few years ago, including: That then became our pattern and remained so until she turned 10 months old and we had had enough. She often stayed asleep upon being laid down, but I occasionally had to repeat the same process a few times until she stayed asleep. No matter how many times she would wake in the night, I would immediately nurse her and then burp/rock her to ensure she was fast asleep, and then put her down. It did not, in fact, last until she was 10 months old, but her dependent sleep habits that grew even more dependent at four months lasted that long. ![]() However, around that four-month mark is when her sleep went downhill, and I joke that “it lasted until she was 10 months old.” My now toddler was a pretty good sleeper as a newborn. Did the mere title of this post make the hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up? Those who have heard of the four-month regression dread those words. ![]()
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