How to Stop Baby Sleep Regressions In Their Tracks - What to Expect

After months of sleeping regularly, your dream of a sleeper has become a nightmare at bedtime and naptime. What just happened, and why?

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Transcript:

So here's a rude awakening. After months of sleeping through the night, napping regularly and well, your baby's sleep habits were almost too good to be true. You practically had to pinch yourself to believe your good luck, not to mention your clearly outstanding parenting prowess.
And now, all of a sudden, your dream of a sleeper has become a nightmare at bedtime and naptime. Those blissful stretches of sleep you could count on are interrupted countless times by wakeups. Naps are a nonstarter, or stop as soon as they start. Your well-rested, cheerful baby is overtired and crabby, and so are you. What just happened, and why?
Welcome to sleep regression, or welcome back if you experienced it in the fourth month, as many babies and parents do. This perfectly normal, if completely exhausting, blip on the baby sleep radar typically appears in the ninth or tenth month, and usually corresponds, as it did in the fourth month, with a particularly busy burst of development.
Babies often start waking during the night or having a hard time settling down for sleep when they're on the cusp of reaching a new milestone or have just mastered a new skill, like pulling up or crawling, or even just being able to get from their tummies, an easy flip, into a sitting position.
Exciting stuff that leaves your baby too hyped up to hunker down for sleep, or leaves him stranded and screaming, as when he pulls up on the crib slats to stand, and then can't figure out how to get himself back down, or just makes your little beaver a little too eager to start a new day of adventures, when the new day isn't close to starting yet.
You can stop sleep regression in its tracks by scheduling in more unwinding time at bedtime, tacking on an extra 15 minutes or so to his bedtime routine. This can help him apply the brakes more gradually, so baby can relax his busier-than-ever little body more completely.
Set the bedtime vibe on chill: no to screens, yes to soft music, low lights, warm bath, quiet stories, and gentle cuddles. Keep in mind, the more active a baby becomes by day, the more unwinding he'll need at night, not just to help fall asleep, but also to stay asleep. And this pre-bed protocol can help him sleep better no matter what's been waking him at night.
Some babies hit a sleep speed bump, too, when they're transitioning from several or more shorter naps to two longer ones. Getting enough sleep by day will help your little one sleep better at night, but getting too much naptime, or naptime that's too close to bedtime, can make falling and staying asleep a losing battle. For the win-win, catch sleepy cues at nap and bedtime before your baby crosses that line to overtired and overwired. Use wind-down steps at naptimes, too.
And as always, for better z's, remember the c-word: consistency. A consistent response to waking, like a consistent approach to bedtime, is likely to result in consistently less waking and shorter fussing times when baby does wake.
C for comfort is always fine, especially if teething pain or a stuffy nose are joining forces with sleep regression to sabotage your baby's slumber. But as it was earlier in baby's sleep learning days, the key is letting him do the lifting when it comes to falling back to sleep, instead, say, of you lifting him up to rock him, feed him, and/or put him in your bed. He'll get the hang of it again, and everyone will get more sleep. Here's to a speedy return to sweet dreams!