What does it all mean?

A sleep regression is where a baby / toddler experiences a ‘set back’ in their sleep. Essentially, they regress and become very irritable, hard to settle to sleep and wake up earlier from their naps and more frequently overnight.

Usually, you will see developmental sleep regressions occur in the first 3 – 4 months, 8 months and 12 months of your babies life. Although, sleep regressions can occur outside these times and for other reasons too.

Why do they occur?

A sleep regression is a sign that your baby is ready for the next step in their development. Your baby grows and develops so much in the first 12 – 15 months of their life and unfortunately sometimes they don’t grow in small steps, they grow in leaps and bounds.

These big growing times put a lot of pressure on their bodies and suddenly, almost over night, they are ready for the next stage in life.

How to get through

Now you know what your baby is going through, you can help their development by jumping on the journey with them and guide them along.

To do this, start with looking at a few of the areas affecting their sleep:

• Adjust their awake time window
  Look at how much awake time they have from when they first wake up in the morning until their first nap and between their nap times – is it in line with the recommended awake time for their age? If not, adjust this. You may be giving them too much or too little awake time between their naps.
• Bed time routine
  The established routine of putting your child to sleep is more important than you think. A set of key steps repeated over and over again – for every nap and night time sleep – communicate to your baby’s body that its ‘time to sleep’. Once a routine is ingrained, the sleep hormone starts to release and help naturally wind down their little body and helps them drift off to sleep.
• Their room
  Set up your baby’s room for sleep – think of all of the sleep inducing comforts, such as a very dark room, cool temperature, gentle white noise, comfortable bedding, cozy sleep outfit, fresh nappy. Even one of these items could be stopping your baby from sleeping (as would it stop us adults from sleeping too!)

Starting with the above areas can help enormously for sleep regressions. For more in-depth information, you can read about the key milestone ages here.

If you are finding your baby isn’t getting over their sleep regression or that it’s lasting more than 2 weeks, it may not be a sleep regression. It could be time to adjust other parts of your baby’s sleep related areas to rule out if it’s the sleep routine or other causes.

Remember – establishing good sleep patterns early is critical to sail through all of the sleep regressions and achieve better quality sleep for both you and your baby.