4-Months of Sleep Regression

Firstly, what is four months of regression?

It's not a regression, it's a brain upgrade. For example, you used to drive this old rickety car, and now you're like driving a Ferrari. It's day and night change. Your child’s brain starts sleeping in cycles. When your child sleeps in sleep cycles, essentially after every 40 minutes, they have to wake up.

True story:

I have been able to bypass the four months of regression with both of my boys. In my first one, I was able to reduce it slightly. We hit it and then I quickly got out of that within a couple of days because I didn't know what was coming around.

But with my second one, from about 10 weeks old, he started to take consolidated naps. Do you know how some people say newborn catnaps are normal? Yes, it is, but there are also ways that you can completely avoid that by putting some things in place so that your child takes consolidated naps sooner rather than later.

So by about 10 weeks old, my second boy was taking 2-hour chunks of sleep. I put him down and literally, I would not hear from him until I looked at the time and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I need to go and get him because I need to feed him. He was able to do that by 10 weeks because I started from day dot.

What is the fuss with a four-month sleep regression?

Now, I want to debunk some myths here, and I want to be able to give you some hope. If you're a mom of a baby that's three months old or less there is a way around it to avoid or completely bypass. I love the word bypass because you can go around it and completely avoid it.

The 4-month sleep regression can feel like a storm looming on the horizon for many parents. It's a time when the sleep patterns of your baby seem to take a turn for the worse, leaving you feeling exhausted and unsure of what to do. The nights become long, and the days feel even longer as you try to navigate this challenging phase. It's a time when you may question whether peaceful bedtimes will ever return.

And wherever you're at, if you're currently going through four months of regression, then you know, there is a way out of that, and you can do some things to get out of that. If you are your baby's three months or less, and you've heard about this four months of regression, or maybe this is your second or your third child, and you've had a bad experience of four months of regression, then this is your chance to have a different experience.

You need to set your child up so that they either can go back to sleep on their own or learn how to go back to sleep on their own. Okay, there's a difference there. When your child is under 5 months old, you don't have to teach them how to sleep. There is no such thing as a behavioral attachment to sleep habits. Which means that they cannot yet attach emotionally to a particular association.

Sleep Cycles

The daytime sleep cycle is 40 minutes, night time is 2 hours because nighttime sleep cycles are a little bit different, where they go through 3 of those sleep cycles before they fully wake up, whereas the daytime ones, it is possible to fully rouse after one cycle of 40 minutes.

If your child wakes up every two hours overnight and every 40 minutes for daytime sleep, then we consider this as you're going through four months of regression.

So this is the key:

“The key to bypassing four months of progression, all in all, is to have the right sleep pressure routine”.

A Call to Action

How do you know if your child has the right sleep pressure routine? Check out my free sleep course below where I share the 3 mistakes that most parents make when it comes to sleep.

As we wrap up our discussion, I invite you to dive deeper into this topic by watching an insightful video we have.

Click here to watch the video and enhance your understanding.

Get Your Child to Sleep Through the Night Quickly and Easily Without Fuss, Tears, or Frustration

(From You or Your Child!)

Sleeping On Purpose

By: Ruth Tai