The Four Month Sleep Regression

The Four Month Sleep Regression

Exhausted moms everywhere are using the term “sleep regression” whenever baby has a rough night. I totally get it, sleep is a complicated thing. Just when you think you have it figured out, baby starts waking every few hours at night, leaving you to wonder what caused the change.

As a certified pediatric sleep consultant, I hear the term “regression” used to explain just about every imaginable scenario. Many people are confident that there’s an eight month regression, a nine month regression, a twelve month regression along with regressions due to teething, separation anxiety and milestones.

For babies that generally sleep well, parents may only see a minor struggle with sleep when it comes to teething or milestones and then baby will be able to get back on track. When your baby doesn’t have independent sleep skills and is reliant on you getting him to sleep, that’s when it will feel like a true sleep regression.

But if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s the four-month sleep regression. This is the real deal and baby’s sleep will be changed permanently. I get questions about this specific regression all the time, so allow me to explain.

In order to understand why your baby’s sleep has changed, first you need to know some more specifics about the stages of sleep. So, here’s the science of sleep explained in layman’s terms.

When we sleep, our bodies and brains don’t shut down. Our bodies and brains are actually very active, especially during REM sleep. We actually go through a number of different stages of sleep. These stages make up the “sleep cycle,” which we cycle through several times a night.

Stage 1 is the initial stage of drowsiness where you can just feel yourself drifting off, but you can be easily woken. If you’ve ever had your little one sitting next to you and they’re so tired, but you’re trying to hold them off until nap time you know what I’m talking about. Their eyes start to close, and their head starts to bob forward. At this point you know you need to get them to their crib or bed for naptime ASAP.

Stage 2 is considered the first “true sleep” stage. This stage of sleep is still light, but if you were woken up you would realize you were sleeping. If you are looking to take a “power nap,” this is as deep as you want to go, or else you’re going to wake up groggy.

Stage 3 is deep and restorative sleep. This stage of sleep is also known as “slow wave” sleep. Deep sleep is a time for cell renewal, immune system repair and when we build up energy for the next day.

Stage 4 is REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, very active sleep. During this stage the brain organizes and stores all of the information and memories from the day before to be stored in your long-term memory. We do most of our dreaming in this stage and our heart rate and blood pressure increase, even our breathing can become fast and shallow.

After we’ve gone through all of the stages, we cycle back to light sleep. This is when some of us wake up briefly or come close to waking up, and then we go back into deep sleep and REM sleep. These sleep cycles repeat over and over again until the alarm goes off.

So why am I taking the time to explain all of this to you? What does it have to do with the four month sleep regression?

Newborn baby’s sleep is different from an older baby’s sleep and an adult’s sleep. They only have 2 stages of sleep; stage 3 (deep sleep) and REM sleep, and they spend about half of their sleep in each stage. Around the third or fourth month (it’s different for every baby), there is a reorganization of sleep. Their sleep cycles change to adopt the 4-stage cycle of sleep that they’ll continue to follow for the rest of their lives.

When this change happens, baby goes from 50% REM sleep and 50% deep sleep to 25% sleep in both of these stages. This allows them to make room for those first two stages of sleep. So although REM sleep is light, it’s not as light as these 2 new stages of sleep that they’re trying to adjust to.

So, with more time spent in lighter sleep, you can imagine what starts to happen. Baby goes through one sleep cycle and gets to the light stage and starts to wake up. With these lighter stages of sleep repeating over and over, there’s more of a chance that baby’s going to wake up.

It’s completely natural to have these wake ups throughout the night. In fact, as adults we continue to wake up three, four, five times a night into adulthood and even more as we get older.

The difference is that as adults, we can glance at the clock, know that it’s still nighttime and roll over and go back to sleep. And we do. Usually so quickly that, the next morning, we don’t even remember waking up.

This is very different for a four month old baby, who lacks these critical thinking skills. If your baby fell asleep at her mother’s breast and in your arms, she’s going to wake up a lot more startled. The last thing she remembers is being held comfortably in your arms, maybe with a lullaby singing her off to sleep. Now she’s alone in her bassinet with mom nowhere in sight.

Baby is awake and looking for mom. The only way for baby to communicate that she’s unhappy or upset is to cry. This full waking means that baby is not going to go back to sleep without some reassurance and intervention from mom or dad.

Another reason why this change in sleep cycles affects sleep so much is because up until this point, parents have either been putting their baby to sleep with a pacifier, or by rocking them, or by breastfeeding them, or some similar technique where baby is helped along on the road to falling asleep.

There is nothing wrong with that. I’m pretty certain that most parents have rocked or fed their child to sleep at some point. It’s very common.

The reason why this becomes a problem now at the four month mark is because baby is spending more time in light sleep, and therefore has a higher probability of waking up. These sleep props or sleep associations that were key in getting your little one to sleep all night may not work anymore.

Although these techniques may be helpful in getting your little one drowsy or even asleep, when your baby wakes up between sleep cycles, they are going to need YOU to help them get back to sleep. Cue the crying, and the every half an hour wake-ups. This can turn into a nightmarish situation fast.

The positive for anyone going through the dreaded Four Month Sleep Regression is that it’s not, in fact, a regression at all. A regression is defined as “reversion to an earlier mental or behavioral level,” and that’s actually the opposite of what your baby is experiencing. We should be using the term “Four Month Sleep Progression”, even though it doesn’t feel like that.

But let’s focus on what you can do to help your little one adjust.

Baby’s sleep best in a dark room, especially one they’re past the newborn stage. You might be saying to yourself, “the room is dark enough” or that a nightlight is harmless. It will help you see during feedings.  

I’m here to tell you that it’s probably not dark enough.

Baby’s room should be pitch black dark, like a cave. Any light coming in the side needs to be covered up. Tape garbage bags over the windows if you have to, or cover them with tinfoil.

Newborns and infants are not afraid of the dark, but they are responsive to light. Light tells their brains that it’s daylight and time for activity and alertness. The brain secretes hormones accordingly, so we want to keep that nursery absolutely pitch black during naps and bedtime.

You also want to make sure you block out noises, especially for daytime sleep and to avoid early morning wakings. With baby spending more time in lighter sleep, noises will startle them easily and wake them up, so a white noise machine is a great addition to your nursery.

“Wait, isn’t that a prop,” you’re asking. It’s not something that your baby would rely on and can’t sleep without, it’s just something to help facilitate the perfect sleep environment. It also can run without parental presence, so it’s not a prop we need to avoid.

If you don’t already have a bedtime routine, now is a great time to start. A short bedtime routine is key to letting your baby know it’s time for sleep. Try to keep the routine to about 4 or 5 steps, and keep them the same every night.

If your baby has a strong feed to sleep association, don’t end the routine with a feed or you risk baby nodding off at the breast or the bottle. Make the feeding the first step of the routine and plan the songs, stories, and getting into PJs towards the end.  The whole process should be about 20 – 30 minutes long, and baby should go into their crib awake, not drowsy.

By letting baby fall asleep on their own, from being awake you’re allowing them to enter Stage 1 sleep all by themselves. If they fall asleep independently at bedtime they will be able to put themselves back to sleep when they wake in the night. This is the key to getting through the “four month sleep regression”.

If baby starts getting fussy before bedtime, you’ve probably waited too long. Four month old babies should really only be going about two hours between snoozes, and bedtime should be between 7 and 8 at night. Start the routine early enough to get baby in bed before overtiredness sets in.

There will be other “sleep regressions” if you want to call it that down the road which can derail your child’s sleep. Traveling, illness, teething and even new milestones can cause your little one to have a few bad nights in a row. But when it comes to the four month “progression,” it’s a one-time thing. Once your baby goes through this transition, they will be following this new sleep cycle for the rest of their life.

Once baby learns independent sleep skills, they will be able to string those sleep cycles together, independently, prop-free, without any need for nursing, rocking, or pacifiers. That’s giving them the gift of sleep that they’ll have for the rest of their young lives.

Now some babies go through this transition and afterwards are still able to sleep through the night without having to change a thing. However, most parents aren’t that lucky and it does take some time and a plan to get baby’s sleep back on track. If you are worried about sleep training and the effects on baby, read my blog post about the 4 most common myths.

For those of you struggling with baby’s sleep post regression, I would love to help you through this. Schedule your sleep solution call today and we can work on a customized sleep program for your little one.

The most common thing I hear after working with clients is, “I can’t believe I waited so long to get some help!” If you’re considering hiring a consultant, now is absolutely the time. What are you waiting for? Book your call now and we can move forward as soon as you’re ready to get your little one sleeping through the night!