Little Dreams Consulting: the ‘4 month sleep regression’ and their top sleep tips

About Little Dreams Consulting

Little Dreams Consulting was set up 8 years ago by Jenna Wilson, following ten years working as a solicitor in Childcare Law. She has trained with Sleep Sense™ and The Sleep Charity (UK) and has attended a multitude of courses with the NSPCC and The Lullaby Trust.

The ‘4-month sleep regression’ and Little Dreams consulting top sleep tips

If your little one is approaching four months, you may be nervously awaiting the dreaded ‘Four Month Sleep Regression’ but is it real and, if it is, how can you manage it?

To understand the answer to this question we need to look a little more about what is happening to your baby’s sleep during this time.

Many of us think of sleep as relatively simple – you’re either asleep or you’re not. The truth is actually far more complex and goes a long way to explaining why little ones go through the ‘4 month sleep regression’. 

The stages of sleep – newborns

Newborns only have 2 stages of sleep and spend around half their sleeping hours in stage 3 (deep) sleep and half in Stage 4 (REM or ‘dream’ sleep). This makes sense as deep sleep is where hormones (including hormones which make them grow) are secreted and REM sleep helps development and regulation of emotions which can help little ones ‘make sense’ of their day and new experiences. 

At some point, they need to transition to the 4-Stage cycle that they’ll follow for the rest of their lives – and it’s at around the third or fourth month that this reorganisation of sleep takes place (generally between 12-16 weeks of age).

The 4 stages of sleep after 12-16 weeks

Stage 1 of non REM sleep is that familiar sensation where you can just feel yourself drifting off but don’t feel as if you’ve fallen asleep properly. During this initial stage, many people, when asked, will deny they were sleeping at all so it is a very light stage of sleep. Babies may seem to stare into the distance in this lightest stage of sleep.
Stage 2 of non-REM sleep is still light sleep but where people tend to realise, once woken up, that they were actually sleeping.
Stage 3&4 of non- REM sleep are deep and restorative. Also known as ‘slow wave’ sleep, this is where the body starts repairing and rejuvenating the immune system, muscle tissue and energy stores – and sparking growth and development in our little ones.
REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. This is where the brain becomes much more active, consolidating information and memories from the day, helping development and emotional regulation. This is also the stage where most of our dreaming occurs.

Once we’ve gone through these stages, we come close to waking up – and then the cycle starts over again until morning. These are the stages of sleep for children and adults alike, and this huge developmental stage is the reason behind the ‘4month sleep regression.’

Why do little ones, without great sleep skills, wake so often in the night?

We all have a specific way in which we fall asleep, so, imagine you were in bed with your duvet and pillow. You come to the edge of sleep, in your familiar environment, roll over and go back to sleep so quickly that you don’t even remember waking. If, however, you woke on the kitchen floor, you would not be able to go back to sleep as easily but would be confused and concerned.

 This is exactly what happens if your baby is always assisted to sleep. Now, of course, if what you are doing works for you and your family then there is no need to change anything. If, however, your little one has always been assisted, by maybe feeding, rocking or patting for example,  to sleep (or even to the point of being drowsy) and is waking every 45-60 minutes, it is because they have woken up in a different environment (like the kitchen floor). This can be a confusing and alarming experience for them and exhausting for you all. To make matters worse, they are now unlikely to get back to sleep without some help. Some little ones will, of course, need a feed or two to get through the night but when their sleep is very disturbed it can impact their growth, development and your sleep too. 

You can see this more clearly from the hypnograph below:

The good news for anyone experiencing the “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 behavioural level,” and that’s actually the opposite of what your baby is experiencing. This would be much more aptly titled the ‘four month sleep progression’ and there are things you can do to help your little one adjust.

Five tips to help you, and your baby, cope

First thing’s first, the Lullaby Trust are the go to advice centre for all things safer sleep so, if you are not sure about something check out their website. 

The Lullaby Trust - Safer sleep for babies, Support for families

1. Try a simple bedtime routine and don’t finish with a feed. Stick to around 4 or 5 steps, and keep the feed near the beginning, otherwise you risk baby nodding off at the breast or the bottle, creating the problematic ‘sleep association’ mentioned above. Plan a song or, story towards the end. The routine should take no more than 20 – 30 minutes, and baby should be awake when you put them down in their cot.

2. Be consistent with all sleep situations. If you have decided to help your baby learn independent sleep skills from around 4 ½ - 5 months old, you need to be consistent with your approach, so they don’t become confused.

3. Get your timing right. If your baby is getting fussy before bedtime, you’ve probably waited too long. Four-month-old babies should really only be awake for no more than 1 ¾ -2 hours between naps, and bedtime should be between 7pm-8pm.

4. Make your baby’s room as dark as possible. You might think it’s comforting to have a little light coming through the windows or from the hallway. But unlike many of us, newborns and young babies are not afraid of the dark. They are, however, very responsive to light as they will now be developing melatonin. Light tells their brains it’s time for activity and alertness, and the brain secretes hormones accordingly, so try to keep the room they are sleeping in as dark as possible during naps and bedtime.

5. Mask unwanted sounds. With your baby spending more time in lighter sleep, noises will startle and wake them easily. Instead of trying to maintain an unrealistic silence in your home, try blocking unavoidable sounds with a white noise machine.

Remember, once you’re through this stage, your baby will have officially moved into the sleep cycle they’ll be following for the rest of their life. There might be ‘bumps in the road’ during childhood (traveling, illness and teething can all cause a few bad nights in a row but there are blogs on all of these points on our website), but when it comes to the infamous four month ‘progression’, it is only a one-time occurrence.

Little Dreams Consulting are offering an exclusive 5% discount to all our readers, on all their full priced packages.

Just mention the Mothership when you contact them, for your free 15 minute call,  and you will receive the discount!