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Do babies have a four month sleep regression?

Dr Pamela Douglas20th of Aug 202321st of May 2024

dark skinned baby in white clothes wide awake

Baby sleep needs shrink throughout the first year of life. For example, the amount of sleep babies need often decreases at around four months old. That's why excessive night waking quite often becomes a problem at this time.

You might hear people refer to this as the "four month sleep regression", although I don't use that phrase. It's not really a regression!

It's just that if we are expecting our baby to spend the same amounts of time sleeping after four months as she did in the first few months, we can find that after a few weeks she starts to wake excessively. This is when it's time to do a circadian reset.

To prevent excessive night waking at four months of age (or at any age, actually), you can work in a relaxed way with your baby's two biological sleep regulators, the body clock and the sleep pressure, day by day and week by week. This might mean spending much of the days outside the house, to meet your baby's sensory motor needs, which also incidentally helps meet your social and exercise needs. We want to make the days with baby as relaxed and as enjoyable as possible, for the sake of your night-time sleep!

If your baby's days are full of rich sensory motor nourishment, then your baby won't be in a sleep situation for longer than she needs to be. This protects your night-time sleep. Although it is quite normal for your little one to wake every couple of hours at night even into toddlerhood, keeping her sleep regulators healthy will help avoid excessive night waking, which can be quite awful for families.

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Next up in FAQs

Is your baby's snoring a problem?

baby sleeping on back

Mostly, excessive night waking is due to a disrupted circadian clock, and can be dealt with by applying the strategies we discuss in The Possums Sleep Program. But occasionally, a baby is woken repeatedly in the night by his own snoring. If your baby is snoring alot in the night, ask your local GP to assess him.

Catching a cold or viral infection blocks up nasal passages and makes your baby snore when sleeping. Some babies have a run of viral infections when they start daycare, or because older siblings bring home coughs and colds. You probably know from experience how viral infections really do interfere for a time with your baby's sleep! Thankfully, this passes within days. In my view, we are best

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