Is the 4 month sleep regression inevitable? Did anyone NOT experience it?

I never had it with either of my children. One slept 13 hours from 6 weeks the other slept all night from the same age but an early riser.

No - never experienced it but my DS was a very good sleeper from Day One ... I'm not sure if it was just luck or because I followed the Gina Ford method which of course is (& always was) very controversial... can't believe it's over a quarter of a century ago !

Hi OP, wondering how things are getting on now? Are you still getting long stretches a few weeks later? Mine has hit four months and still seems to get one decent stretch, but all other sleep seems to have eroded… settling for naps and bedtime feels so soul destroying…

We didn't have it. DD started doing decent stretches of 12-6 at about 3 months and bedtime crept gradually earlier from there until by 6 months she was pretty reliably doing 7-6. Her sleep was only interrupted by identifiable factors like teething or illness or getting out of routine.

My first didn't have it at all.
My second has just done through it but lasted less than a week!

Well, possibly.

But there's a flipside in that there's lots of support for issues that are just taken for granted.

For example, I could work out that my son was dairy intolerant at 12w old with online support, which was dismissed as wind by the health visitor, and "all babies cry, it's tough, let's have a moan and deal with it".

He was in horrible upset and pain. I used SM to identify the issue and solved it rather than assuming it was just what babies do.

Nope not definite! My DD only slept on chests for the first 8 weeks, then 8-10 weeks was suddenly able to be put down and sleep longer stretches. Then 10 weeks to 6m slept through every night! From 6 months onwards split nights and normal night wakes.

First baby: very noticeable at 4 months. Second baby: not at all

I have a 7mo DD, she slept through the night with only 1 wake since she was 8 weeks old... but she reached 6 months and we are making up for it now!!
Make the most of it while you can

The sleep regression does happen, as it's a biological change in how the baby produces melatonin, but the differences are in how it's experienced:

• some babies are terrible sleepers and remain terrible sleepers.
• some babies sleep exceptionally well and remain good sleepers.
• some sleep better as they get towards 4m, but regress.

My son was like yours, became a great sleeper by 12w, and regressed at 15w.

Totally agree. So much about which parents worry and fret was just normal 'having a baby' years ago. I wonder how much anxiety that people claim to have is a result of too much internet?

My older son has always been a good sleeper. He pretty much slept through the night from about 14 weeks and has ever since (he’s nearly 3 now).
Occasionally he’ll have a few nights where he wakes up multiple times (or won’t settle/gets up early), but the 4 month regression was very minor and he was still much better than a lot for babies are at their best 😂.

My daughter also started sleeping through the night from about 14 weeks but her sleep regression was much more obvious (and slightly later). Her sleep is also much more variable and she is much more sensitive to sound/light, illness, teething, developmental leaps etc. Although saying that it’s also been temporary every time and after a few days or weeks she goes back to sleeping through. At 8 months she has slept from 7-7 for the past 2 weeks.

We haven’t sleep trained and this is just their normal sleep cycle (they’re both terrible at napping in the day though!)

So no, you won’t necessarily have a regression at 4 months and if you do then it might just be temporary. The PP who said that sleep changes a lot in the first year is completely right though, although for us most of the changes seemed to relate to daytime naps rather than nights.

I think the phrase sleep regression has come into fashion since my two were babies, late 70s/early '80s, they'd certainly never heard of it! They both dropped the 2am feed at about 8-10 weeks and other than when they were teething slept well.
They were in their own room from birth, no doubt frowned upon today but trends and advice change, we were told to put them down on their front. Things change.

Nope, certainly didn't with my second but they slept solidly from birth and never gave me any sleep problems.
My first, yes I do remember a regression and it was a couple of weeks after she turned 4 months.

As I understand it (or certainly as I remember it having read up on it at the time - my DC are a lot older now so it's while ago) it's not so much a regression as a developmental stage where babies start moving through 'sleep cycles' of lighter and deeper sleep. Whereas as newborns they can appear to sleep soundly for solid periods.

Definitely at this stage I remember mine sleeping for 45 minutes and then audibly/visibly stirring or waking. So I think this can be the stage where if (for example) a baby is fed or cuddled to sleep, this is where you can get issues with them waking up needing to be fed or cuddled back to sleep again. Hence the term 'sleep regression'. If your baby is able to self-settle, you might not notice much at all as they are able to settle themselves back to sleep.

I definitely noticed, with all three of mine, that the 3/4 month stage was the point at which it was obvious that we were disturbing them in the night - for example if one of us coughed, or turned over, a few seconds later the baby would wake up. So yes, something of a 'sleep regression' linked to that developmental stage and this definitely improved once they were sleeping in their own rooms.

It’s a scientific fact that sleep changes at that age. However, neither of my 2 regressed, actually it was the opposite, but definitely we noticed the change. From 4 months they needed to be undisturbed in a quiet, dark room and put to bed properly at 7 (before that they’d been napping on and off in the moses basket in the living room until we went up to bed). But so long as we did that they slept 12 hours 7-7 with a quick dreamfeed at 10ish as we were going to bed.

I think it's a myth, perpetrated by confirmation bias.

We never experienced this because it always felt like a 'regression' lol don't think DD slept for more than a 3hr stretch until she was about 14 months. All babies are different so it's just a wait and see!

The 4 month sleep regression is the only one with actual science behind it. Around 4 months old, babies' sleep architecture (their sleep cycles) changes, this happens to all babies. However some babies are really not affected in terms of their frequency of night waking, whilst others can go from 1-2 night wakings to suddenly waking every 2 hours or more. Not sure why there is so much variation in the effect of the changes

Personally I don't buy into all of these other so-called regressions at specific ages, every child is really individual and sleep will often go up and down over the first few years.

My advice would be don't waste energy worrying over something that may not even happen!

Ha ha, my 2 boys slept great until their 12 week jabs, then they went from this period until they were 3 1/2 (yes 42 months) awake every single night multiple times. And wouldn't go to sleep at night either, absolute nightmare for 3 years, overlapping as 2.5 year age difference.
The 3rd girl was a little angel though, was good all through. (she's 20 now).
so whatever happens you'll soon be looking back at it.

We didn't have it. Mine started sleeping six hours at around 14 weeks, and carried on like that until we started weaning which did mess up sleep. It's not inevitable! Teething was the worst bit for us.

It's just a phrase banded about to label the normal ups and downs of babies sleeping

You'll have as many progressions as 'regressions'. Try not to get too hung up about it.

I didn't really notice the 4 month sleep regression with my first. But that's because his sleep was so awful it couldn't really get much worse. He wouldn't sleep put down for the first 3 months so DH and I ended up taking it in shifts to sit up all night with him, I did 8pm till 3am, then DH did 3 till 7.30am. Yes we'd tried everything. A mix of reflux, probably neurodiversity and looking back, probably CMPA too. It nearly killed me.

He also wouldn't sleep in the pram or car seat, only when walked in the wrap, so sleeping when baby sleeps was only a dream

I'm anxiously thinking about this as I have a 3 month old who sleeps fairly well at the moment. My older one had a terrible 4 month regression, up every 1.5hrs until she was 8 months old. We learned to deal with it though. Honestly you survive and you get by.
I had the absolute worst experience out of my NCT group at the time. If this is a representative sample...
2 had hourly wake-ups but for only a few weeks then started sleeping through
2 went from 2 wakes to 3 wakes a night
1 had no change
1 had improved sleep!

No sleep regressions here as my kids always woke every 3 hours until they were a year or so. I think you’ve had it very good to be getting 8-9 hrs at 4 months. Biologically babies wake to keep themselves alive and fed, so it’s not a bad thing.

Being a parent is a tough transition and sleep deprivation is the worst. But it’s all part and parcel, you have a lot ahead of you (behaviour regressions, health issues, academic worries etc). Waking at night is totally normal and just one of the joys of parenting 😉