4 month Sleep Regression Research

@iaian This is all anecdotal.

My infant health nurse (the head of department at the hospital I was at) mentioned that when she started her career (maybe 40 years prior) there was no such thing as regressions. 4 months was no different to any other month. But now it’s a common issue. Her hypothesis was that babies (and mothers in general) used to be at home for sleep a lot more and therefore were more settled? I have no idea if that could be true or not but I thought it was an interesting observation.

In my own experience, my first born was a terrible feeder, terrible sleeper, and went through all the regressions. We ended up sleep training him later on. I put a lot of those issues down to my own inexperience.

My other 3 kids I didn’t sleep train formally, but I did put certain sleep practices in place from day 1 (you could say it is sleep training but it’s not as if I spent 3 days doing a program or whatever) and none of them have experienced regressions. We may get 1 or 2 nights of fuss, but certainly not “up every hour” sort of issues.

So… I don’t know what I think. But I think it’s interesting that regressions SEEM to be influenced by parental practice. I have no actual science to back that up though!
 
@truthandlove I picked and chose various methods, but basically things like:
  • woke baby up at the same time each morning and fed them in the sunlight
  • followed appropriate wake windows. 45-60 mins for a newborn
  • wrapped tightly, placed into bed, noise machine, dark room. Very few naps were held so they got used to their bed
  • let baby have a chance to settle themselves, and if I needed to help, start with settling in their bed (shushing, patting, rocking the bassinet etc)
  • if they woke early, do the same. Leave them until I thought they actually needed help, settled in bed first.
  • fed every 3hrs max during the day. So I woke them for feeds
  • encouraged full feeds. No snacking or getting distracted
  • follow a sleep/feed/play cycle
  • if they woke early for a feed I was willing to feed at 2.5hrs but not before. So I would continue to settle or hold them until feed time
  • at night I would let them sleep the number of hours to age they were. For example, 4hrs at 4 weeks. 5hrs at 5 weeks. The 3 kids that I followed these principles with were very easy at night. They would feed, go back to sleep, and naturally extended their night feeds. My last 2 were sleeping 12hrs by 12 weeks. (Second born kept a night feed until he started solids. I will also say that the last 2 were topped up with formula for feeds but my second was purely breastfed. So that might have something to do with it)
It sounds like a lot, but made life pretty easy cause they were generally settled and I knew what the day was going to look like. All 3 were doing long naps and long nights by 3 months old, and none of them had regressions. Maybe a night or 2 of fussiness. I can’t guarantee this would work for every kid but it worked for us!
 
@iaian Most of those people are full of BS and just prey on desperate parents.

Firstly every kid is different. We didn't sleep training till 5 1/2 months, kiddo made it clear that she was pissed to be awake and only got mad if we tried to help.

4 months is a little young for sleep training I think. At that age we let our daughter fuss for a bit to give her time to practice but would go in if she escalated beyond fussing. Self soothing to get back to sleep is definitely a skill and does require practice from our experience. She would occasionally connect cycles but it wasn't till we sleep trained that she really was able to do it reliably. At that age I think so much is going on with them that each week is so different you can't really expect much reliability.

We are at 1 year now and besides teething she sleeps through the night.

I wish I had data for you, all I can say is our kid didn't fit any of these expert's advice. I think sleep is what it is at that age and as a parent you are just so desperate to get more sleep you will try anything while constantly stressing about screwing up their sleep skills so badly you will never get to sleep again.
 
@iaian I soothed my baby to sleep throughout the four month sleep regression. He outgrew the hourly wake ups after about 2 weeks. I didn’t do anything to teach him to sleep.
 
@iaian I put together the research I found relevant to the 4-month sleep regression here (with references listed at the end of the article).

I think you already have all the main pieces. Learning to connect sleep cycle is something that will happen naturally but if we give them brief opportunities to try and go back to sleep when they wake between cycles and don't have another need greater than their need to sleep. I described one of my babies' sleep journey here; there is a paragraph there about how we approached self-settling and the time of the 4-month regression, if you're up for a read.
 
@iaian the instagram account Cosleepy provides evidence based guidance on cosleeping. some of the research presented about the benefits of adults helping infants coregulate during sleep make sense in my mind to translate into assisting little ones to sleep and back to sleep. your infant is still building a secure attachment to you and sleep is a vulnerable time. it makes sense that physical proximity to a trusted adult would let an infant relax enough to fall and stay asleep. i will say that a gentle ferber-esque method worked for me to transition away from cosleeping into my little one sleeping independently at night and then also for naps. 1, 3, 5, 7, and then 10 minute timers, comfort the baby after each timer, lay baby down, exit, and start the next timer in sequence when baby begins fussing.
 
@iaian I've been looking into this as well. Baby Sleep Science is a great website that lists its sources. Here is their article on the 4 month sleep regression. It doesn't "help" a ton but explains the science behind the "regression" and gives some ideas.
 
@iaian Their sleep cycles definitely mature around 4 months (could be sooner or a bit later) and that is 100% normal brain development. I’m 99.9% sure this is definitely known oh an and based on infant sleep studies but I don’t offhand know the specific studies to link. I’d guess this is something we’ve known for a long time, and the studies are quite old. Old as in they happened a long time ago, not outdated.

Anyway. Pretty much everything else is all over the place. Though I’m quite certain that every baby experiences and reacts to these brain changes differently. Some you might barely notice a difference. Others it is a drastic change.

I am not aware of any high quality evidence that not sleep training has any negative effect on babies. It is not wrong to continue to support them to sleep if it’s working for you. Some babies truly need more support than others. It’s just so individual
 
@iaian Anecdotal, but we never went through the 4 month sleep regression. My daughter surprisingly didn’t have any regressions. She started sleeping through the night early on and even 3.5 years later never wakes up in the middle of the night. Because of this we never had to even consider sleep training. I have no idea if it was anything we were doing because she seemed to come out of the womb a good sleeper.
 
@hnsmusic We have a very similar situation with our LO. He’s almost 11m and we never felt like he hit a “real” sleep regression. He started sleeping through the night by 3m (around 6-8 hours) and now sleeps roughly 12 hours. We went through a few spurts of him awaking up once or twice for a bottle but other than that he just has always been a good sleeper. We actually had to wake him up to feed as a newborn because he would just sleep through it all
 
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