The Dreaded 4 Month Regression

Ahh the 4 month regression! Not a easy time for any mum, because no one needs extra wakeups?! We’ve been there before where you are up at 3am googling, ‘what is the 4 month regression and how can I get my baby to just SLEEP?! But take comfort, lets talk through what this actually is, why this occurs and how to overcome it!

The 4 month sleep regression is actually a PROGRESSION! Yep, that’s right -it’s actually a good thing! Your baby is healthy and developing correctly. The most common age that it occurs is 3.5 months up until 5 months. It marks a permanent change to your baby’s sleep patterns. It means just like us, they move in and out of light and deep sleep cycles. They no longer sleep so deeply like a newborn where you can just pop them anywhere. As adults, we move in and out of light and deep sleep, multiple times a night but we just know how to seamlessly fall back asleep where we don’t even remember that we did! This is what bub is learning and adjusting too.

How to overcome the 4 month regression:

  • Do you find that the wakeups are 2 hourly or even hourly?! Is bub depending on you to hold/feed/rock them back to sleep? They are now depending on this to link their sleep cycles. The trick here is to teach them to fall back to sleep WITHOUT holding them or feeding them back to sleep and using a lot of hands on support instead.
  • Cat napping during the day – Again short naps are very common during this stage. By the end of the day they are exhausted from not having restorative sleep! The trick here is to practice resettling them after they awake from one sleep cycle of 40 mins.
  • Bed time – How is bub actually falling asleep here? If they are so drowsy from their bottle or being rocked to sleep, they will look for this in the middle of the night also. Try and practice bub being put to sleep completely awake. Support bub with hands on reassurance.
  • White noise – this can help bub link their sleep cycles and is a good sleep association to have.
  • Patience – hang in there mumma! This will not last long. The quicker you practice the above skills, the quicker they learn to grow out of it.

If you have any further questions feel free to book in for a free 15 minute consultation or book in for our 2 week Infant Sleep Package!

The Baby Comforter x x