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

[firstbabyfirsttimemum]

My baby is 3 months old and seems to have always liked her sleep at night. She has done 2.5 hour stretches as a newborn and it’s slowly increased to 6 hour, then over the past week she has been doing 8-9 hours. She doesn’t nap much in the day (maybe 3 naps) and won’t be put down at all so I guess that is the trade off! Is this guaranteed to all change at 4 months? I know sleep is developmental but everyone goes on about how 4 months is particularly horrific and I am anxious about it now, even though I know we have been so fortunate so far

To be honest I haven’t experienced sleep regressions with either of my kids, sure there are times when their sleep is better/worse but I didn’t experience anything like a regression at 4 months. You may well be lucky like me, best to try not worry and go with it if you can!

It’s not inevitable, but their sleep does change a lot throughout their first year especially. As she’s already sleeping so well you might be lucky and she’ll just carry on, or maybe she’ll sleep in 5 hour stints instead of 8 and it won’t be too difficult to deal with. I think people with babies who don’t sleep well before the regression notice it even more as they can go from waking every two hours to every half hour for example. I wouldn’t worry to be honest as your baby is a good sleeper already!

We had an awful set of regressions. Went from sleeping pretty much through the night to waking up 5-10 times. Sorry OP!

Didn't experience it. But had a DD who self soothed prior, Through nothing I did.

At bang on 3 months we had an awful night where DD woke 3 hourly through the night which was unheard of for her at that point. I paniced thinking it was the 3/4 month sleep progression. However it had snowed and was feezing. Turned out she was waking cold for that one night. After that we were back to 9pm-7am.

Note there is biologically only 1 sleep change at 4ish months. I constantly see the instamums go on about their little darlings being in a sleep regression every other month and making it worse by letting them stay up until the early hours playing with tablets. It's not true. There are loads of things that can influence sleep such as learning a new skill, but they're not the same as the biological change that drives the 4 month change. Even though DD was a great sleeper we had the odd week or few days (that felt like a month) where she'd wake alot in the night or take forever to goto sleep. Usually linked to some kind of change in her life. It's tempting to want to change up everything as you feel they're broken. But we just carried on as we had and they get out of it.

Ours was terrible at 4 months, I think it went on for about a month, and then at 6 months when he moved into his nursery we started getting the same again. Between those periods though his sleep had been amazing, even prior to the four months he was a great sleeper. But we implemented a few things around 6 months old and tbh I don't know if it's fluke or not but his sleep has been amazing since then. If it's any help, these are the things we did:

White noise machine playing at bedtime
Sleeping bag
Blackout blinds
Dummy attached to his sleeping bag by a fabric dummy clip
Ensuring he had both enough solids and bottles during the day

We just had a brainstorm and were like, what can we do to help this situation 😂 (the situation was him waking up between 15-20 times per night!) within literally a couple of days he was sleeping through 11-12 hours and he's still the same now at 14 months old

Same! Slept 8 hour stretches and then woke 8-10 times a night until 14 months 😅

Didn't notice it with the first - but then his sleep was appalling anyway.
Didn't notice it with the second, but she was a great sleeper from the start. Didn't sleep through, but woke for a (very efficient) feed every 2 hours and then went straight back to sleep.

A little bit I remember where he started waking more in the night again. But with both kids we had little blips of sleep regression at age 18 months and age 3. I remember them more vividly than the baby phase. I wouldn't worry about it - presumably you're on mat leave so you can just ride it out and sleep more in the day.

I didn’t my first was just an awful sleeper until she was 18 months, my 2nd was pretty much sleeping through at 8 weeks. They are teens now, the first still burns the candle at both ends, the second will still happily sleep 12 hours a night if her schedule allows

I'd never heard of it until Mumsnet - mine definitely never had it so presumably it's not inevitable. I'm not sure if any of my friends had it either, but some of them had babies who were awful sleepers anyhow so it think it would have been harder to notice any sleep regression...

Hopefully your baby is one that never read the manual about sleep regression!

Never experienced a 4 month sleep regression with any of my DC, I have 3. Dc1 and 2 were amazing sleepers always, no regressions at any point, and DC 3 was always awful but still no discernible regression 🤣

Im not sure that sleep regression was a thing when my children were babies, I'd never heard of it anyway and certainly didn't experience it.

I think maybe 20 years ago when we didn't have so much social media we maybe just got on with it and had a bit of a moan with our friends during tough times but didn't analyse too much. That was my experience

I didn’t experience it either, all my DC slept 7-8 hours at 8 weeks and this gradually got longer and was 12 hours at 12 weeks and continued like that. They woke a couple of times a year if they were teething etc and that was it.

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 😉

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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

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.

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.

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.