I recently worked with a client that noted in their Intake Form that their little 8month old’s sleep was "Even worse than when he was a #newborn". 😱 Many parents can perhaps relate to this experience and feel like they were mislead into thinking that they had an “easy” baby that suddenly went off the rails.
I remember with my never-sleeping-firstborn, everyone told me that by 12 weeks, everything would calm down. However, I distinctly remember feeling extremely dismayed when things went from bad to worse. 😓
I asked my client when they had noticed this sudden change in their 8month's old behaviour and we pinpointed it to around 4.5months. I could immediately see that here was a baby, very capable of sleeping well, but had taken a bit of a detour after going through the 4month Sleep Regression. 🧐
What is the 4month Sleep Regression? 💡 The 4month Sleep Regression is actually a neurological PROGRESSION that results in poor sleep habits emerging and forming. From birth to 3 or 4months, a baby’s sleep cycle overnight lasts for 4 – 6 hours. Most babies will wake for a feed every 3 to 6 hours and then fall back to sleep. Some parents may even experience 8 hour chunks of sleep. Once our little one’s experience the neurological progression at around 4 months (give or take a month because every baby develops slightly differently) their sleep cycle changes. Their sleep cycle now closely resembles an adult’s sleep cycle. That is, the sleep cycle length shortens to 2 – 4hours.
A sleep cycle consists of REM, Non-REM and light to deep sleep phases. As we exit a sleep cycle we will experience light sleep that we can slightly wake from. As adults we may roll over, plump our pillow or even go to the toilet. Our babies wake up, just as they did before the 4month sleep regression, however these wake ups are now occurring 2hrly rather than 3 – 6hrly. 💡
Naturally, overnight, us adults may not be thinking as clearly or perhaps we wish to get back to bed asap, so we simply offer our baby the breast or make up a bottle. Or perhaps your baby was sleeping so well before this that their wake-up is unexpected and you assume that it must be hunger because they don’t normally wake so regularly. In theory, offering the breast or bottle for every wake sounds wonderful, nurturing and natural. However, when you understand the reason that your baby is suddenly waking more regularly you can see that offering your baby milk every 2hrs overnight is not really the answer to their cries. 😉 This method can inadvertently cause genuine hunger to be triggered all throughout the night. This may then cause snacking or small feeds during the day. Additionally, your baby will develop this as their sleep association. If you feed your baby for every wake overnight, then it is only normal that your baby will learn that the only way to fall back to sleep is with mum’s breast in their mouth or a bottle of milk. With this new sleep cycle maturation at 4mths – we as parents, have lovingly, yet perhaps not quite so wisely also taught our babies that they need milk in order to fall back to sleep. And so the 4month regression can become the beginning of a very long, tiring, unsustainable sleep association that neither benefits mum nor baby. Baby could be using that solid sleep to grow, convert short term memory to long term memory, repair their immune system etc. Mum could be using that solid sleep to function at her best for her littles during the day. If this sounds like your journey so far and you’re ready to make some positive, nurturing changes to support your little one’s sleep, then please send me a dm or head to my website to check out my packages and reviews. Have a great afternoon, Rebekkah
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