When Maya was about 4 months old she started having trouble staying asleep at night. She would go down fine but within a couple of hours would be awake again. She had previously been sleeping long stretches of 8-10 hours, and even sometimes completely through the night, so to have her wake up after only being down for a couple of hours completely threw me. I distinctly remember one week that was particularly bad, she was up every hour or two for several nights in a row. At the time I had attributed it to the fact that I had just started trying to put her to bed without being swaddled and I figured maybe she was going through a growth spurt. I went back to swaddling her and her sleep seemed to get better after a week or two so I didn’t think anything of it and didn’t really research it at the time.

Enter Anna at 4 months. Low and behold her sleep has also started going haywire. Last week in particular was bad with her getting up 2-3 times at night, sometimes as often as every 3 hours. This is completely unheard of for her. Since the day she got home from the hospital her first stretch of sleep has never been less than 5 hours, most nights she sleeps 8-10 hours and pretty regularly sleeps 12 hours straight through. When she started getting up more frequently I began having flashbacks to when Maya did the same thing. This time I hadn’t changed anything. Anna is still swaddled at night, her bedtime routine is the same, I really couldn’t think of anything different. I, again, thought maybe growth spurt, but figured I do a little research.

Well, apparently 4 months is the magic time for changes in sleep habits that “experts” often refer to as sleep regression. At around the age of 4 months a baby’s sleep patterns begin to change. The length of their sleep cycles and how frequently they cycle through them changes. A baby’s sleep cycles at 4 months old are 45-50 minutes long, which means that every 45-50 minutes they come out of a deeper sleep. They don’t always wake up completely but often will every few sleep cycles. If your baby hasn’t figured out how to self-soothe they will often cry and require attention from mom or dad in order to fall back asleep. That may mean they need to nurse if they are used to nursing to sleep, or they may need to be rocked, etc. Over time, and each baby is different some take only a few weeks while others take months, your baby will begin sleeping better again.

There are ways you can help your baby get used to this new sleep pattern including establishing and sticking to a bedtime routine, helping your child learn to self-soothe by giving them a few minutes before responding to their fussing to give them a chance to fall back asleep on their own, making sure your baby is napping well during the day as being overtired can mess with nighttime sleep as well. It is frustrating when a baby who normally sleeps very well at night all of a sudden is waking frequently, just remember that it is just a phase and eventually (hopefully quickly) he or she will return to better sleeping habits.

Maya returned to her regular, good sleeping habits within a few weeks and Anna seems to be doing the same since this week has started out with much better sleep than last week. I know Anna is putting herself back to sleep already because I’ll hear her on the monitor for a minute or two either fussing or just talking to herself but she quickly falls back to sleep. Plus, I’ve started putting her down for her naps drowsy but still awake and she is falling asleep on her own.

Doesn’t it always seem like babies throw us a curve ball just when we are getting used to their little routines.