Knowledge is power. When we know better, we can do better. We, as parents, can respond to our children in a more educated way, maybe even with confidence.

As a parent, you are constantly responding to your baby or toddler’s behaviors. Whether they’re happy or sad, excited or upset, you’ve got a response for them!

I’m guessing your response is most successful when you can easily identify the cause of their feelings, right?

In regards to sleep, your baby will experience regressions. How do you respond? Well, that starts with knowing the cause of said regression.

When you know more about your baby’s development, you’ll be able to identify the cause and respond most successfully to help them through it – so let’s get into it!

True Developmental Causes of Sleep Regressions

Your Child’s Sleep Development

This is the big one that parents fear – the dreaded 4-month sleep regression. This is the one regression that is rooted in sleep development.

When your baby was born, they only had two stages of sleep – active sleep and deep sleep. After this development, typically occurring between 3.5-5 months (hence the name “the 4-month sleep regression”), your baby will have the same four stages of sleep that we as adults have.

Their stages are cycled through more quickly and will lengthen as they grow and develop, but there are no other changes with sleep development that will occur (at least that we know of at the time of this writing!) anymore in their lifetime.

Physical Milestone Development

Rolling, crawling, pulling to stand, and walking can all wreak havoc on your child’s sleep too. Anytime your baby is on the cusp of mastering a new skill, you’ll find that it may interrupt their sleep. Their body feels the need to “practice” this skill, even when they should be sleeping.

What’s a mom to do??

Practice! Help your little one master the skill during their awake time so it’s not interrupting their sleep too much.

And, stay consistent. Keep your expectations around sleep the same and you’ll help your baby through it more quickly.

Language Development

Anytime your little one experiences a language burst, there’s likely to be a regression with sleep as well.

The same way their body feels the need to practice crawling or pulling to stand in their crib at night, they’re brain may feel the need to babble, chatter, or sing a song when they’re experiencing some language development. You may hear your little one jabbering away at 4:30 a.m.

If you wouldn’t normally get them up at 4:30 a.m., don’t start now! Again, the best thing you can do is stay consistent with your expectations around sleep and your little one will get past it in a few days.

Other Causes of Sleep Regressions

I want to start by saying that regressions due to any of the items in this list may affect sleep, or they may not. You may have control over them, or you may not. Do what you can to set your child up for success so that the following events don’t affect sleep too much when they do happen.

Illness

We can’t avoid every germ, so it’s bound to happen: illness.

Your job is to keep your little one comfortable. Offer medicine per your doctor’s instructions. Keep them as comfy as possible by suctioning their nose, using a humidifier, and keeping them in their own sleep space.

Yes, your child will sleep best in their own space. That means you should tend to them in their room. If this means you lay a mattress or some cushions on the floor of their bedroom next to their crib, that’s what it means! You can thank me later – it’s much easier to remove yourself from their sleep space when they’re feeling better than it is to remove them from your bed.

Teething

Man, does teething get a bad rap when it comes to sleep!

“Why isn’t she sleeping well?”

“Oh, she’s just teething again!”

Okayyyy. Children are “teething” the first three years of their lives. I, for one, am NOT going to blame poor sleep on teething for three years.

Similar to milestone development, I would stay consistent with your expectations around sleep. Offer medicine if the tooth is about to erupt and the gums look sore. After the tooth pops through, your little one should be able to get right back on track.

Oh, and…

…I’ve noticed that my kids who were sleep trained…would wake up with new teeth and not a peep of a complaint about teething pain – just a few fresh, little pearly whites in their gummy smile to show for it!

Teething may affect some kids more than others, but don’t let it be your scapegoat for poor sleep.

Travel

Obviously, sleeping in a new or different place or having to share a room with your child can get sleep off track.

My best advice is to try as best you can to recreate their sleep environment from at home. Bring their sound machine and sleep sack from home. Maybe have them practice sleeping in their pack n play in their nursery before you expect them to sleep in it on their first family vacation.

And make it dark!! There are so many options for travel blackout solutions. Invest in one if you want to enjoy your trip to the fullest!

If sleep does get off track while traveling, which is common, as soon as you get back home, get back to your regular routines and expectations. In a few nights, your little one should be back on track.

What About “Developmental Leaps”?

I know the idea of the “Wonder Weeks” are all the rage in the parenting world and in many mom groups online. But, don’t shoot the messenger…

…the two doctors behind the book, app, and website, husband and wife duo Plooij and van de Rijt, based their findings of a predictable pattern to fussy periods from 35 years of observational research of chimpanzees.

In an article published on healthline.com:

“Their conclusions are based on their observations and not on scientifically controlled studies. So don’t worry if your baby does not fit their pattern or behave in a predictable way. Not all parents find that The Wonder Weeks idea works for them.”

It’s really an idea, a theory, and not rooted in peer-reviewed research. The issue with their findings is that no other researchers have been able to be recreate the study with the same findings, nor has it been found to be ethical (Plooij apparently falsified his research and attempted to not have the findings of another researcher underneath him published because when they studied human babies, they contradicted his findings. He was fired from his position and left academia.). These are the two credentials needed for research to be considered valid and acceptable.

Yet, the app, the book, and the website remain very popular.

I get it.

It’s nice to know why your baby is fussy. Because, really, all they can do to communicate their displeasure is to cry. And nobody wants their baby to cry!

I’m not saying that there isn’t cognitive development going on, but the idea that it’s at a very certain, predictable period of time…is improbable. Children develop at different rates. One baby may crawl at 6 months, and another not until 12 months. One might say their first word at 11 months and another not until 18 months. Common sense – and other valid research – would indicate that cognitive development would develop similarly. If you want to learn more about these other credible and researched theories, I’d encourage you to look into Jean Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development and Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development.

All this to say…don’t let your baby’s poor sleep be blamed on a “developmental leap” that may or may not be occurring this week.

In fact, if you’re confused about regressions, leaps or feel like your baby is going through something right now, you should reach out to me and see if there is something else going on. Let’s start sleep training your baby and see if those leaps and fussy periods magically go away!